Judging A Book By Its Cover: Pride and Prejudice (III)

This is my weekly post where I choose to appreciate a book for its cover art or overall design – to me, a well-designed book is like a piece of art. We all judge book covers to some extent. Personally, it’s usually a title/cover combination that pulls me in when I’m browsing in a bookstore. I can’t say that I’ve ever decided against a book with terrible cover art if I liked the sound of the plot, but I have purchased special editions of books, or multiple editions of books based on their cover art. If book covers didn’t matter, publishers (looking at you, Penguin!) wouldn’t put out so many beautiful editions!

This edition was scrounged from a collection of my grandmother’s old books. It’s a Macdonald Illustrated Classics edition, illustrated by Philip Gough. Inside it reads “first published in this series in 1951” so I’m going to assume that’s when this particular edition was published. The pages are wonderfully smooth and yes, they smell amazing. It even has an adorable little clear cover protecting the book itself, and the plastic cover is where the title information is printed.