B.

Great Scot!

Behind the scenes

The holy grail of dustjackets is a first edition of the Great Gatsby

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The  1925 edition, published by Scribners obviously, which if you have one at home in good condition, should sell for well over $1 million. The first UK edition, published the following year by Chatto and Windus will get you a mere $100,000. The cover is the work of Barcelona born Francis Cugat.

To make it even more complicated various typographical errors were gradually corrected as more copies of the first edition were printed. The earlier your printing, in other words the greater the number of such errors, the higher the price.

Well we can't offer such material in our current show, but there are some absolute gems in our exhibition at the Peterborough Street library - the Art of the Dust Jacket where you can see forty examples of covers demonstrating the same skill: striking design that connects in some way with the content of the book it covers.

The show runs until 14 July.