Okładki polskich wydań utworów Jane Austen po 1989 roku

The graphic designs proposed by Polish publishers cannot be compared neither in number, nor in diversity to those presented by Margaret C. Sullivan in Jane Austen Cover to Cover: 200 Years of Classic Book Covers. Nevertheless, they are a valuable and still undiscussed source of knowledge on the Polish reception of Austen’s novels. Further information on this subject is provided in the first part of the paper by a compilation of book series in which some or all of the texts by Austen have appeared since the 1990s. The analysis of the book covers takes into consideration the relation between the design and the content of the narrative as well as the character of the artwork and its origin. The most popular were 19th century paintings (portraits, genre scenes, less frequently landscapes), film stills from the movie adaptations and floral patterns. As one of the aims of the study was to answer the question how the covers direct the reading process and place the text in the literary tradition, the remarks on the publishers’ choices were supplemented with the readers’ reviews. In the conclusion, it was suggested how the potential, new editions could be designed to stand out from the former ones.