Pages & Proofs

Yes, The Great Gatsby is everywhere thanks to Baz and Leo, but F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel never really went away. It’s been published countless times since 1925. Join us on a countdown of 30 Gatsby cover designs – a few great ones, some good ones, and a couple of shockers too.

These remarkable pictures come from a much-sought after self-published photography book called The Afronauts by Cristina de Middel. AbeBooks currently has a single copy for sale and, at even just over £1,000, it will probably sell very soon. Only one other copy has been listed on our site and that sold for £825 in March. [...]

Our latest video salutes the design skills of Penguin and explains the colour scheme behind those vintage paperbacks that you see in any secondhand bookshop worth its salt. Orange, green,  cerise, dark blue, red, purple, yellow, grey and light blue are all explained.

AbeBooks is all about the business of books, including book-related ephemera: in this case, art. Many authors have tried their hand at drawing or painting, and many artists and illustrators drew and painted long before they became successful or famous. To the lucky collector who finds one, nothing is more priceless or precious than a [...]

Some people think it’s one of the weirdest books ever published. An art book unlike any other art book. A unique and disturbing surreal parody. Grotesque and beautiful. It’s very hard to describe. Codex Seraphinianus by Italian artist Luigi Serafini is a window on a bizarre fantasy world complete with its own unique (unreadable) alphabet and [...]

Published in 1976 by Kestrel Books, here is a rare book for Easter – a copy of Watership Down by Richard Adams, with a remarkable fore edge painting of a scene from the story. Don Noble was the artist who supplied the watercolour artwork on the fore-edge. John Lawrence was the book’s illustrator.  A fore-edge [...]

Plug the name of Fritz Wegner into AbeBooks and our booksellers will show you some lovely artwork from this Austrian-born illustrator, who plied his craft in London. Born in Vienna in 1924, he studied at St. Martins School of Art from 1939 to 1942. Aside from publishing work, he also designed stamps, magazines and commercial [...]

Over at the Publishers Weekly blog, PYxyz, Gabe Habash highlights a book that time that forgot – a Brazilian edition of The Shining by Stephen King from 1977. It’s not exactly scary and doesn’t seem to convey the novel’s content. About a month ago, I was searching for something Stephen King-related to put on this [...]

The Saturday Book was an annual miscellany that featured art, literature and comment on British life during World War II and the decades that followed until 1975. The series was initially edited by Leonard Russell with John Hadfield taking over the reins in 1952. Each edition of The Saturday Book provides a wonderful glimpse into [...]