Thursday, April 22, 2010

The best of all possible houses

by Jessica

Last week demonstrated that few people note, or especially care, about the publisher behind a given book, which means that it is a distinct minority that pays attention to the colophon, the little logo printed on a book’s spine. Knopf has a sleek borzoi, Harper a torch, and Random House a rather distinctive house. For anyone who has ever puzzled over where those symbols originate (or fans of generally useless trivia) here is the provenance of the little house on the big books.

3 comments:

  1. Thought this was really interesting, so I hope you don't mind, but I stole it for my blog (with credit given, of course): http://www.reclusivebibliophile.com/publishing-house-logos

    Thanks for the literary trivia, I love it!

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  2. Really interesting. I notice the logos on the spines but the history never really occured to me until now.

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  3. Interesting! I think I will now spend more time looking at my books' spines and then researching the origins of their logos.

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