Dust jackets (or book jackets) are a type of detachable book covering that have been regularly used by publishers in the English-speaking world, and some countries of the European continent, since the nineteenth century. Their original purpose was chiefly protective. Surviving jackets from the nineteenth century are scarce because they were usually thrown away by their original owners after purchase.
Nineteenth century jackets were generally plain, and often duplicated the cloth cover which lay underneath. By the early 20th century, however, the art on the cloth-bound cover was gradually being replaced by the jacket cover. By the 1920s, what had been a protective wrapping had become what we now know as the dust jacket, with a permanent place in publishing.
In a New Zealand context, popular trade publishing was initially led by Whitcombe & Tombs. Founded in Christchurch in 1882, they dominated New Zealand publishing until World War II. Many of their early publications were wrapper-bound, stapled booklets, although they published more substantial books bound in pictorial cloth. The precise identity of the earliest New Zealand-published dust jacketed book is not known, but a number of unpretentious specimens from the first two decades of the twentieth century survive today.
Dust jacket design in New Zealand gathered speed during the 1920s and 1930s. This was a time of technological growth: cars, electricity, telephones, film, and radio had become part of daily life – alongside increasingly flashy magazine covers. Recognising the need to compete, New Zealand publishers commissioned artists, illustrators, and graphic designers to create visually appealing covers. The 1930s depression had already caused many artists to work in advertising or newspaper illustration to make a living. Designing book-jackets provided a further opportunity for diversification.
From the 1940s to the 1970s, the dust jacket in New Zealand had become a widely used, and at times subversive vehicle for disseminating new visual styles, a combination of the unmistakably local with international trends.
The current Reed Gallery exhibition, Jackets Required, showcases a diverse range of New Zealand-published jacket-adorned books. The displays span the 20th century, but with special emphasis on the post-war years, when emerging publishers such as Reed and Paul’s, alongside such private presses as Pegasus and Caxton, began to produce literature with an unmistakably New Zealand flavour.
This exhibition of more than 100 books includes – but is not limited to – many with covers adorned by prominent New Zealand jacket designers and artists including Russell Clark, Leo Bensemann, Evelyn Clouston, Dennis Turner, Dennis Beytagh, Colin McCahon, and Juliet Peter among many others. The books form part of the McNab and Reed Collections and are housed in the Dunedin Public Library’s Heritage Collections.
Julian Smith
Reed Rare Books and Special Collections Librarian