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]