Cover Art

Weekly Geeks is colourful this time around; we are told:

This week it's all about judging books by their covers! Pick a book--any book, really--and search out multiple book cover images for that book. They could span a decade or two (or more)...Or they could span several countries. Which cover is your favorite? Which one is your least favorite? Which one best 'captures' what the book is about?

I've chosen to highlight some of the incarnations of L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon. Anne of Green Gables is of course better known but I love Emily and thought there were some interesting covers to share. (If you want to see hundreds of covers for all of LMM's books try looking at the LM Montgomery Book Cover Gallery or at a sampling over at a fancy page created by a partnership of LMM sites and libraries and the virtual museum.)

Here are some of the covers I found:

The first 2 on the far left are my favourites; the first because it is the copy I read many times over; the second because it is the original cover and very beautiful. There are a few covers here I've never seen before, which is great, and then there's the lovely 60's one in the second row, ew. I really like the one with the silhouetted tree and Emily beneath, it is new to me. I'm not sure which one I think captures the story best, though; most of them seem to reflect both the story and the era in which they were created. I find the last one to be very reminiscent of The Borrowers or Magic Elizabeth, and a few other children's books of the 60's/70's. I wonder if it was the same artist? This was a fun exercise, and I've enjoyed looking at some of the other participants' choices as well; I'll have to find some time and look at them all.