A Brief Visual History of Virginia Woolf’s Book Covers / Emily Temple

Virginia Woolf was born 136 years ago today. It almost seems silly to write that her books are wonderful, or world-changing—but they are. I’d wager that, if you’re reading this space, you knew that already. Woolf’s writing has been essential reading for so long that there have been countless editions and reprints, redesigns and rebrandings, of all of her books—and not just the most famous ones, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, etc., but even the deep backlist. Sometimes her books get they covers they deserve—and sometimes they don’t. (The current Wordsworth Classics, for instance, are truly awful.) So below, I’ve dug up some of the most interesting, or at least representative. Of course, because of the onslaught of covers, this isn’t anywhere close to a complete collection, and that the exact dates of particular editions are not always easy to track down, and in some cases are approximate. This is only a way to look at the general progression of the treatment her work has been given over the years—the good, the bad, and the ugly—with some fan-designed covers thrown in there for fun. ... [mehr] http://lithub.com/a-brief-visual-history-of-virginia-woolfs-book-covers/

 Orlando, first edition (1928

Penguin Books editions, designed by Angus Hyland, 2011: