University of Virginia Library

I

One of the concerns taken up in my recent article was the far too common
practice among dealers of moving jackets from one copy of a book to another;
and I commented on the discussions occasioned by the 2004 report of a subcom-
mittee of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association that criticized the practice and
insisted on dealers' noting any discrepancy in condition between a book and its
jacket (and identifying switched jackets when possible). A few months after the
London book-jacket conference for which my article was written, Nicolas Barker
published an admirable leader entitled "Sophistication" in the Spring 2006 num-
ber of The Book Collector (55: 11–27). Recognizing that certain alterations to a
book can sometimes be countenanced if conservation is necessary for the book's
survival, he was appropriately firm in declaring other intrusions, aimed at "res-

toration," to be unjustifiable tampering with historic artifacts—the "crime of
distorting historic fact" (p. 17).

One of his examples dealt with remboîtage (insertion of a book's text block
into a different binding) and the other with the supplying of jackets. Even when
dealers disclose what has been done, these practices are indefensible: as Barker
says, "Remboîtage is wrong, and doubly wrong if the fact is suppressed" (p.15).[4] In
the matter of jackets, he called for the national organizations that make up the
International League of Antiquarian Booksellers to adopt more explicit codes of
ethics, with provisions for sanctions to enforce them. To begin the process, he
offered his own Ten Commandments regarding jackets. The two central ones,
from which all else follows, are the first and fourth: "Thou shalt not have any
jacket but the original jacket"; "Remember that thou keep absolute the integrity
of jacket and book. Upon it thou shalt do no manner of change or exchange…."
Indeed, "no manner of change or exchange" is an elegant summary of the
position, for it covers both switching jackets and touching them up. Barker's
commandments should be memorized and held inviolable by all dealers and
collectors.

That this hope is vain was reflected in a depressing article that appeared a
year later in the May/June 2007 issue (No. 27) of Fine Books & Collections. Written
by the magazine's editor, P. Scott Brown, and ominously entitled "The Anatomy
of Dust Jacket Restoration" (pp. 40–45), it makes clear what a lucrative business
jacket restorers have, for the demand from prominent dealers exceeds the supply
of "expert" restorers. The practice of sophisticated (so to speak) jacket restora-
tion apparently began in the mid-1970s when Peter Howard (Serendipity Books,
Berkeley) proposed the idea to John Pofelski, whose job in the R. R. Donnelley
binding department was about to end, along with the department itself. Now
there is a small group of such specialists, whose work has affected thousands of
jackets in the stocks of dealers and the holdings of collectors and libraries. Some
dealers are willing to invest in such restoration in order, obviously, "to make
more money" (in Howard's words). Brown even says, with a curious logic, "The
jacket restoration trend has had the beneficial effect of bringing a lot of books
into circulation that would not have been salable or collectable" (p. 45).

The only reason that books in restored (or switched) jackets are "salable"
at high prices is that there is considerable demand for them on the part of
collectors—which in turn means that there are many collectors who need to be
educated in the matter of historic preservation. One of the finest traditions of the
book world is the role that dealers have played as the teachers of collectors. But
in this matter, a few prominent dealers have forgotten that the product they are
selling is historical evidence, and they have violated collectors' trust by support-
ing the alteration of that evidence (even when they have disclosed it). Brown's
article makes this incredible assertion: "To restore or not to restore? … In large

measure, it comes down to personal preference" (p.45). How can the commission
of crimes against the integrity of historical documentation be so easily dismissed
as "personal preference"? To condone the alteration of artifacts for cosmetic
reasons is to rob collecting of meaning as a serious intellectual pursuit.

The market for twentieth-century jackets, which supports the restoration
business, remains strong. Just how strong is illustrated by the fact that Bonham's
auction house, in the catalogue for its 10 June 2009 sale in New York, placed an
estimate of $80,000-$120,000 on Maurice Goldstone's copy of the first printing
of The Great Gatsby in a slightly frayed jacket (whereas a copy without the jacket
was estimated at $1500–$2500). The price actually fetched by the jacketed copy
was $182,000, and the unjacketed copy brought $3,660 (both figures inclusive of
the buyer's premium). Another aspect of the interest in twentieth-century jackets
is the continuing production of books on the art of paperback-cover and jacket
design: recent examples are Kevin Johnson's The Dark Page: Books That Inspired
American Film Noir (1940–1949) (2007);[5] Bond Bound 007: Ian Fleming and the Art of
Cover Design, edited by Selina Skipwith (2008); and David M. Earle's Re-Covering
Modernism (2009).[6]

The role of the book trade in the history of the study and appreciation of
jackets was a major strand of my recent article. In connection with early jackets,
the name of Ken Leach, a Brattleboro (Vermont) dealer, loomed large in the
article because of the major collection of American pre-1901 jackets that he
formed in the 1970s and sold at auction in 1984 (608 lots). His death in 2007
deserves to be recorded here, as well as the fact that Marcus McCorison wrote a
long obituary of him.[7] McCorison devotes a paragraph to the unsuccessful 1984
auction, noting that "Leach was bitterly disappointed by what he considered the
obtuseness of collectors and librarians who, failing to recognize the significance
of book coverings to bibliographic inquiry, did not take advantage of his offer-
ing." As McCorison says, "The sale may have been held before its time." The
results would clearly be far different today.

Since my latest article, two dealers have become particularly active in the
study and collecting of early jackets: Mark Godburn (The Bookmark, North
Canaan, Connecticut) and Tom Congalton (Between the Covers Rare Books,
Gloucester City, New Jersey). In 2008 Godburn established a website entitled
"Nineteenth Century Dust Jackets: An Illustrated History" (http://nineteenth-
centurydustjackets.com), which announced his plans for writing such a history,
offered a "picture gallery" of early jackets, and encouraged people to report
information about book-jacket history and to send images of jackets they have
access to. In October 2009 he changed the site to one that accommodates blog-

ging (http://earlydustjackets.blogspot.com/). Although the new site has fewer
illustrations of jackets, it originally had a longer text, which excerpted the preface
to his forthcoming book and quoted Lewis Carroll's letter of 6 February 1876
to Macmillan discussing the jacket for The Hunting of the Snark. This site could
become a useful clearinghouse.[8] Godburn has been buying many of the pre-1901
jackets that have come to his attention, as has Congalton, whose more extensive
collection now incorporates the assemblages formed by two other dealers. Ap-
parently Congalton has not yet amassed as many jackets as Leach did, but he is
well on his way. The efforts of these two dealers will significantly contribute to
the future study of book-jacket history.