Dust jacket

Modern dust covers still serve to display promotional material and shield the book from damage.

At this date, publishers did not have their books bound in uniform "house" bindings, so there was no reason for them to issue dust jackets.

Book owners did occasionally fashion their own jackets out of leather, wallpaper, fur, or other material, and many other types of detachable protective covers were made for codices, manuscripts, and scrolls from ancient times through the Middle Ages and into the modern period.

At the end of the 18th century, publishers began to issue books in plain paper-covered boards, sometimes with a printed spine label; this form of binding was intended to be temporary.

The jackets that were used at this time completely enclosed the books like wrapping paper and were sealed shut with wax or glue.

The oldest publishers' dust jacket now on record was issued in 1829 on an English annual, Friendship's Offering for 1830.

Most jackets of this type were torn when they were opened and then discarded like gift-wrapping paper; they were not designed to be reused, and surviving examples are known on only a handful of titles.

Many were discarded in bookstores as the books were put out for display, or when they were sold; there is evidence that this was common practice in England until World War I.

These jackets, with the outer cloth usually reinforced with an underlayer of paper, were issued mostly on ornate gift editions, often in two volumes and often with a slipcase.

Other types of publishers' boxes were also popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, including many made to hold multi-volume sets of books.

[3] In Japan, both hardcover and softcover books frequently come with two dust jackets – a full-sized one, serving the same purpose as in the West (it is usually retained with the book), and a thin "obi" ("belt"; colloquially "belly band" in English), which is generally disposed of and serves a similar function to 19th-century Western dust jackets.

[4] Dust jackets from the 1920s and later were often decorated in art deco styles which are highly prized by collectors.

Other examples of highly prized jackets include those on most of Ernest Hemingway's titles, and the first editions of books such as Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, among many others.