Related Information
As the name suggests, a dust jacket was originally a nondescript paper wrapper intended to protect the binding of the book beneath until sold. Early dust jackets were intended to be discarded, and relatively few survive from the mid-19th century.
Over the course of the twentieth century, they also (some might say primarily) became a tool to sell the book, with eye-catching front covers and glowing blurbs from the author's literary friends. Collectors of modern firsts now desire a copy with the original dust jacket, preferably intact and as near mint as possible -- but if this grail is not available a copy with a jacket in poor condition is preferable to one without a jacket.
High quality facsimiles of original dust jackets for certain classics can now be purchased relatively easily — which is another thing buyers must be wary of when evaluating a first edition for purchase. (ABAA members are experienced in spotting reproductions or other instances of a book being paired with the jacket of a different edition.)
The Instagram age has recently introduced a new phenomenon, companies that design and print new dust jackets to improve on the publisher’s originals or make your bookshelves more aestheticly pleasing (or, less charitably, to make an influencers' taste more easily apparent in the background of a video).
Examples:
by John Steinbeck
New York: Viking Press, (1939). First edition. Top edge dust soiled else a fine clean copy in a darkened dust jacket split at spine, closed straight cut? repair and chip at crown. Dust jacket price and first edition statement on flap present.
Offered by Boston Book Company.
The Grapes of Wrath (First Edition) with (l) and without (r) the dust jacket.
Dust jacket for The Grapes of Wrath protected in mylar.
by Wharton, Edith; A.B. Wenzell [Illustrator]
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905. First Edition. First edition, first printing, American issue. (No ads at rear. As per Garrison later US printings had ads at rear.) [vi], 533 pp. with frontispiece and seven illustrated plates. Bound in publisher's red ribbed cloth lettered in gilt. Near Fine with slight lean to binding; slight darkening to spine and mottling to cloth. Former owner gift inscription to front paste down and slight perfume odor to pages. In the scarce original dust jacket in impressive condition, light edge wear and spine darkening, Very Good+ with partial splits to the spine joints and a mostly closed tear at the top end of the front spine joint. Generally bright and attractive, putting the example of the jacket reproduced in Garrison to shame.
A suppressed issue of the jacket with a line stating "for the first time, the veil has been lifted from New York society" is mentioned by Wharton's biographer R.W.B. Lewis (p. 151); Wharton had the jacket changed and the offending line deleted before the book was formally issued; it was unseen by Garrison and is not present on this example. A critical and commercial success as well as a masterpiece of literature, as the publisher correctly predicted on the dust jacket.
Offered by Burnside Rare Books.
Dust jacket of The House of Mirth laid flat.