Women and book covers: Are we stupid?

We've had some interesting discussions about books lately on Alpha Mummy (see below for a wrap-up). I was just reading everyone's contributions to the classic childhood books post - look for a roundup of Alpha Mummy reader favouites soon.

In the meantime, there's an interesting piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the covers of books marketing to women. "The beautiful book is an increasingly rare thing. Most times you see one, the author is male. What does this say? All women writers deserve generic treatment while all men are special in their own way?""

Catch up on Alpha Mummy "books coverage" below.

The stages of a woman's life, according to the NYTimes bestseller list

A new kids book about cosmetic surgery

Caitlin Moran on the classic books of childhood

If having children ruins your taste in books

Comments

[Delilah]

Dunno. How would we ever agree on one book to read and discuss? And if my book club(s) are anything to go by, a written one would carry a very real risk of libel.

I seem to remember that when the novel was invented they were almost chicklit by definition, reading them was considered a particularly a female vice and not something to be proud of. I have a feeling this had something to do with the general Protestant unease with fiction as a walking lie, including plays and so on. Until then, books were largely serious nonfiction and anything that smacked of fiction was generally dressed up as serious allegory, like Pilgrim's Progress.

[kieransmum]

Well, perhaps it's not such a mad idea then.
Would there be any other takers?

And would the TimesOnline people mind? They don't seem to mind us chatting off-topic, but perhaps the AM journalists could let us know if it isn't what they want.

[Lazy Mummy]

KM - I think an online book group of people from AM would be great. I'm fairly certain that the quality of discussion would be higher than that of the book group I used to attend (which sadly deteriorated over the years from intelligent conversation about the subject, to 15 mins of "I liked/didn't like it" followed by several hours of wine-fuelled gossip).

But...how?

[Lucy]

Thanks Kieransmum, that's really interesting. From what I know of said teacher of mine, though, she'd quite enjoy using someone else's data to argue the opposite point!

[kieransmum]

FWIW, Lucy, I remember attending a lecture by Eamon Duffy which argued the exact opposite, that books were feminised and beautiful in the medieval era, ornaments rather than literature.
Don't know if it's true, not a medievalist myself.

[j]

"The beautiful book is an increasingly rare thing. Most times you see one, the author is male. What does this say? All women writers deserve generic treatment while all men are special in their own way?""

This reminds me of an advert.

"You know how often you really need to have a pair of beige elasticated trousers? well now you can always be prepared, thanks to blah blah".

The statement "The beautiful book is an increasingly rare thing. Most times you see one, the author is male." is balls, and it follows that the argument is rubbish as well.

Show me your data (Grump grump)..

[mumoftwo]

The premise here is incredibly weak because all the five titles shown in the original article have either the word 'girls' or 'wife' in them (apart from the historical one which is about one of Henry VIII's wives). Titles like 'girls in trucks' or 'the girl who stopped swimming' or 'the other wife' are obviously calculated to appeal to the chick-lit market, so it is not surprising that their books are marketed with pictures of, well, girls and wives (whatever they look like) on the front of them. I don't think, for example, Margaret Atwood has this problem.

[Lucy]

AMT - can't really put words in my lecturer's mouth (I'm sure she had a good theory going, though). I like the idea of Medieval chick-lit! Obviously, books for women would tend to be in English, not Latin. Often, religious texts such as saints' lives were written specifically for women (the classic example is the early 13th century Ancrene Riwle, which was written for three aristocratic sisters who were anchorites). Later on, Eamon Duffy points out that Books of Hours were available to quite a large part of the population - he mentions a servant-girl stealing a copy, and suggests that this meant she had, at least, the aspiration to possess a book, or thought she could sell it without it being too obviously 'stolen goods'.

I've not really studied enough about manuscripts to add any more - but the point Delilah makes about men liking 'impressive tomes' may come into play! There's that Tudor pic of pricess Elizabeth with a tiny little book showing off her hands (and a big one on the lectern behind her) - then there's the way that women read 'handbag' books ...

[kieransmum]

All these book posts are making me feel guilty about not doing more reading.
Perhaps I should give up Alphamummy and resurrect my reading life.
(Or perhaps we should start a book club! :-)

[Debbie]

Don't they say never judge a book by its cover????

An interesting point between the covers in different countries, having lived in the UK, the USA and Australia I found them to be very different, and have had the same experience of looking for a particular book and finding it looks totally different and sometimes totally different classification in the shop or description on the book cover - very interesting how they market in different countries.

[Lazy Mummy]

I don't think women read more - certainly not among my family & friends. We all read "classy" stuff and we all read trash, depending on how the mood takes us (then again, we all read *a lot*).

AMT - thank you for the info, I didn't know all that!

[AMT]

http://www.peterharringtonbooks.com/s_5556.asp

Aphra Behn in contemporary binding.

You could find identically bound copies of books by any author of the period, male or female.

Historically, the binding tells you more about the wealth of the owner than the sex of either author or owner. Publishers only started producing "luxury editions" in fine bindings in the 19th century. Before that, you bought the book and took it to be bound, so the same edition of a book can be found in many different bindings.

Anne

[Delilah]

I think women just read more, so like spending less per book and having something they can stuff in a handbag. Men like having impressive tomes that advertise their intellectual prowess to the girls whose legs they are studying instead of actually reading.

[Lazy Mummy]

Surely hand-drawn medieval illuminated texts don't have much bearing here? Perhaps a better comparison would be with books post-printing press? There were definitely popular (read: "mass market") texts during the 18th century (Aphra Behn, for one).

[AMT]

Lucy, could you (or did your lecturer) give any examples of this? In what period was this supposed to be happening? You mention illumination, but pre-Gutenburg, rank and wealth had much more to do with owning books than gender (see the Book of Hours of Queen Isabelle of Spain, and many other noblewomen's devotional works).

Printed book were published in plain paper wraps, to be bound by the owner according to what they could afford (gilt leather, sheepskin, or boards) well into the 19th century. So a wealthy woman might have a beautifully bound, hand-coloured library and a less affluent man, uncoloured, roughly-bound copies of the same printing.

A smaller proportion of women, of all classes, would have been literate until relatively recently, but those who could read would have owned similar texts to men. Unless there's some genre of mediaeval chick-lit I'm forgetting?
Anne

[Lucy]

For what (little) it's worth, all the men I know seem to value the aesthetic aspect of books far more than I do, though this may be because I had a big brother who read my books first, so I grew up assuming that the natural state of books was to be messy.

However, a lecturer of mine offered the conjecture that, historically, books produced by men for men were often very beautifully illuminated and illustrated with careful writing, whereas books for women were much more likely to be plain and functional. The reason being, I think, that books for men expounded the vital truths of Christianity and therefore counted as works to the glory of God, whereas books for women (even religious books) were meant for the inferior gender, and thus, as the making of them was functional rather than devotional, no work was wasted on making them merely 'pretty'.

I've really enjoyed all the 'book' threads - thanks to all blog-writers.

[Lazy Mummy]

My favourites are the old Penguin Classics (the orange ones) - you know, the ones they're finally reviving. Never understood why they needed to change them to begin with! And the old Jonathan Cape Arthur Ransome covers.

Don't know much about beautiful covers for male vs. female authors, but I have to say that the author of the article Jennifer links to doesn't actually provide any examples of male authors. I thought the article was a bit weak, actually - it was only half an argument.

The other point that I think IS valid though, is that covers are usually different on British vs. American publications of a book. And 9 times out of 10, I prefer the UK cover. Now, that might be my British upbringing/sensibility/penchant for a certain type of design/style (based on childhood cultural references/style), but I often think that British book covers are more appealing than their American counterparts. For example, I was looking at Jonathan Safran Coer's book in the airport a few weeks ago in the UK & thought "that looks interesting - why haven't I ever heard of him?" Then when I came back to the US, I specifically looked for him in a local bookstore and realised I'd passed over the same book many times because the cover was garish and had really turned me off (I didn't buy it, incidentally...).

I'd be interested to know if anyone else who lives/moves between the two cultures has had a similar experience (maybe the opposite way round, in Jennifer's case, for instance?)

[Ann]

Just a quick one - Virago have just brought out a beauiful set of 'feminist' classics with forewords and covers by Celia Birtwell, Oral Kiely etc.

Good ones to collect - I have a set which I hopefully will get my daughter to read at some point. (although it may be a little early to introduce her to valley of the dolls)