Illustrated books of the 1890s were often conceived as visual units, with artists providing decorative endpapers and bindings to match their illustrations. These harmonies were brought into sharp focus by the leading practitioners: Aubrey Beardsley, Laurence Housman and Charles Ricketts were centrally concerned with visual consonance, and all created striking cloth bindings to match their books’ interiors. Alfred Garth Jones was another contributor to this tradition and designed several elaborate bindings.
All of his covers were embellished in the style of Art Nouveau. Foremost among these are his bindings for Milton’s Minor Poems (1898) and Queen Mab (1901), both of which are enhanced by curvilinear arabesques along with a stylized treatment of natural forms. These are elegant, abstract works which establish the tone of Jones’s measured interpretations of the texts.
Left to right: (a) Designs by Edwards for Milton’s Minor Poems; (b) Queen Mab’s Fairy Realm; and (c), Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Jones also worked as a free-lance designer of cloth covers for books in which he was only concerned with their exteriors. Among these is his livery for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), a celebrated cover in which he combines an interlocked tendril, in part foliate and in part a flame, with a bold panel presenting the Hound in black silhouette standing on an abstracted image of Dartmoor; two questions marks are tantalisingly placed in roundels on each side of the canine motif. The overall effect is self-consciously imposing and sensationalist, and stands in surprising contrast to the sophisticated understatement of most of Jones’s bindings.
Bibliography
Books with book covers and illustrations by Jones
Note: Several bindings have been ascribed to Jones which, on examination, prove not to have been done by him. The following is a tentative list of covers designed by this artist in the period 1894–1902.
Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Hound of the Baskervilles. London: Newnes, 1902.
Doucet, Jérôme. Contes de Haute-Lisse. Paris: Bernoux et Cumin, 1899.
Doucet, Jérôme. Tales of the Spinner. New York: Russell, 1902 [English version of above].
Lamb, Charles. The Essays of Elia. London: Methuen, 1902.
Milton, John. Minor Poems. London: Bell, 1898.
Peters, William Theodore. The Tournament of Love. London: Bretano, 1894.
Queen Mab’s Fairy Realm. London: Newnes, 1901.
Sylva, Carmen. A Real Queen’s Fairy Tales.Chicago: Davis, 1901.
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. London: Newnes, 1901.
Created 15 October 2024