The dust jacket of a book is the detachable outer cover, usually made of paper and printed with text and illustrations. This outer cover has folded flaps that hold it to the front and back book covers; these flaps may also double as bookmarks.
A dust jacket, propped up and partially unfolded for illustration
The back of a dust jacket, showing the ISBN
Front dust jacket art by Thelma Cudlipp for Don Marquis' Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers, 1916.
A book cover is any protective covering used to bind together the pages of a book. Beyond the familiar distinction between hardcovers and paperbacks, there are further alternatives and additions, such as dust jackets, ring-binding, and older forms such as the nineteenth-century "paper-boards" and the traditional types of hand-binding. The term "Bookcover" is often used for a book cover image in library management software. This article is concerned with modern mechanically produced covers.
Front cover of the St Cuthbert Gospel, c. 700; the original tooled red goatskin binding is the earliest surviving Western binding.
Ivory cover of the Codex Aureus of Lorsch, c. 810, Carolingian dynasty, Victoria and Albert Museum
One of the goldsmith covers from the so-called silver library of Duke Albrecht Hohenzollern in Königsberg, now in Nicolaus Copernicus University Library, c. 1555
Detail of the cover of a pocket edition of the Book of Common Prayer, vellucent binding by Cedric Chivers with Art Nouveau gold tooling, hand-painted design inlaid with mother of pearl
