Thursday, 7 August 2014

Why they Burned Down the Library of Alexandria

Another competitor for the late lamented Tutis: The Library of Alexandria, whose reassuring web presence consists of a Facebook page full of unsolicited legal advice. Unlike Tutis, who stole their wildly inappropriate cover images from anywhere, The Library of Alexandria mostly stick to paintings in the public domain. Fortunately for our purposes, they are choosing the images based on no sane basis.

Here's their unique approach to P. G. Wodehouse...







Mark Twain...




F. Scott Fitzgerald...




The hidden side of Antarctica...



And their strange takes on some other literary classics (the unconventional cropping is their own work)...








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9 comments:

Tororo said...

Perhaps is The Man In Fog, already known as the hardest-working man on book covers, moonlighting as an art director in Alexandria. A possible explanation for the notions this anonymous artist seems to possess about cropping and other things being somewhat foggy.

7 August 2014 at 19:42
Brian Busby said...

Gotta say, Jeeves is really looking good.

7 August 2014 at 20:58
JRSM said...

Tororo, it's an intriguing theory.

Brian, you can see why Bertie was so keen to keep Jeeves from being poached.

7 August 2014 at 21:44
Barbara Delaney said...

I'd like to hear the jazz played by the old dude with the violin. And what's up with Nicholas Nippleby?

8 August 2014 at 00:19
Touch-and-go Bullethead said...

"The Clicking of Cuthbert" is a collection of Wodehouse's golf stories, and the woman on that cover is holding some sort of knobbed rod that is not entirely unlike a golf club, so that one in isolation could pass for a joke. So, too, the cover for "Tales of the Jazz Age." The painting selected for "The Prince" is entitled "The Awakening Conscience," and so might be a comment on the book.

The others, however...no, that is pure madness.

8 August 2014 at 15:35
missdisco said...

does anyone else with an e-reader browse through out of copyright titles looking for the laziest, ugliest covers. You know, when they make an effort!

11 August 2014 at 12:09
JRSM said...

That's the thing--if you're getting a public domain classic ebook, there are numerous free sources. Why pay for such ham-fisted productions? And what confidence could you have that the innards aren't all messed up as well?

Bullethead, I admire your attempts to inject sanity into some of these covers.

11 August 2014 at 17:55
missdisco said...

£2.63 for a public domain book that has the title spelled wrong!

I wonder if people make money that way?

12 August 2014 at 10:35
JRSM said...

I suspect so: if you want an example of the number of nitwits who buy ebooks without even looking at the author or cover, see this: https://ca.celebrity.yahoo.com/blogs/celebrity-news/canadian-author-emily-schultz-profits-sharing-book-title-153118420.html

13 August 2014 at 03:42

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