A Collection of Original Vintage Advertisements for Classic Books

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Recently, we stumbled across this great original advertisement for “Scott Fitzgerald’s new novel The Great Gatsby” that was discovered in a 1925 copy of the Princetonian . Though printed ads for books aren’t very common anymore — at least outside of paper book reviews — they used to be all the rage. In fact, the first-ever print ad was actually an ad for a book entitled Perfect Occurrences of Every Daie journall in Parliament, and Other Moderate Intelligence. Now that’s a mouthful. Charmed by the pencil sketch of Fitzgerald, and by the whole idea of book ads in general interest publications, we dug around for a few more vintage advertisements for classic books. Now if only we could see some of these on a Times Square billboard, that would really make our day.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a 1925 Princetonian. [via]

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, 1948. [via]

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy, 1968. [via]

Money by Martin Amis, 1984. [via]

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, 1937. [via]

Kim by Rudyard Kipling, c. 1902. [via]

Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne, 1926. [via]

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, 1926. [via]

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, 1955. [via]

V. by Thomas Pynchon, 1963. [via]

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969. [via]