Facsimile
Dust Jackets
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I have just reopened “Lady Bluestocking's Books” on eBluejay!!
Click here to see what Vintage Books with Facsimile Dust Jackets I may be selling there.
It might be just as reasonable to ask someone who'd lost their winter coat, 'why they were thinking of replacing it.'
Just as their name implies, dust jackets serve a very practical purpose. Books do best and survive longest when they are well-protected against dust, sunlight, and abrasion. A book's dust jacket helps do all these things. I'm constantly searching for books with jackets, but also for jacketless copies of those same editions in order to restore jackets to them. Without question, I have found that the books which have retained their dust jackets are more reliably in great condition. The original jacket might be falling apart, but the book beneath it often looks great because the jacket has done its job. Happily, there are still many, many, many jacketless books well-worth preserving with new jackets.
After all, the supply of books with “original” jackets is pretty scarce and getting scarcer all the time—as the paper and inks are naturally degrading. There are certainly not enough originals out there for all who would like to have them—or for the books which deserve to have them.
So, originals are justly coveted, but facsimiles are a great solution for books that have already lost their jackets. You are giving back to the book what it once had, but lost. You're protecting the book-from sunning, from rubbing against other books in your collection, and you're lending support to all spine edges—one of the most vulnerable areas of the book.