Hello booklovers, and welcome to this review of the first four books in the Harper Muse Painted Editions series.
This is a limited-edition collection of classic literature published by Harper Muse.
Each hardback book features wraparound artwork painted by artist Laci Fowler on glossy, sculptured boards.
I’ll add links to each of the books in the comments section below if you want to look for them for yourselves.
It's nice to see the cover artist getting love and appreciation from the publisher -
so often we are drawn to books because of their cover designs
Laci Fowler, a painter based in Nashville, Tennessee,
is the artist behind the primarily landscape focussed covers for this series – I’ll add her social links in the comments box below.
Okay enough intro, let’s get to the books! We’ll start with detective short story classic The Return of Sherlock Holmes.
We'll start with detective short story classic, Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
The first thing you’ll notice is that the books come with a transparent belly band which has the title embossed in gold on the front, and information about the book on the back.
I don’t love these as a design choice, because they are quite fragile and form a barrier to reading the book,
but they are there for aesthetics because it means they are free to leave the actual book cover free for you to enjoy the artwork.
And the covers are really beautiful.
They are “naked” covers, with no dust jacket, but the boards are textured, with many of the landscape features being sculpted in relief, which I do love.
Here you can see the windows of the houses and the sign for Baker Street, and some of the flower beds are all raised on the front cover.
And this continues around with sculptured spines and a back cover as well.
[♫ music ♫]
The page edges are gilded, the text block is sewn, and the books also come with a matching ribbon marker.
[♫ music ♫]
And now to the interior treatment.
The title page lists the books as being part of the Pretty Books Collection,
although Harper changed the description later to the Painted Editions Collection.
The books have a short biography of the author at the beginning, which is a nice touch,
along with symbols from the books included in the chapter headings.
The pages are a bright white and decent weight.
The text is clear and well-laid out making it easier to read.
And another selling point of the series is the full page decorative pull quotes, taken from the text of the book.
But this is where I found my first problem.
Look at this first quote – we’re only on page 46 but the quote is from page 330.
Now, I get that sometimes the quotes have to fall on certain pages that might be out of sync with the text
to make the binding process easier which makes the book more affordable.
But the next quote is from page 56 and it is put next to page 92.
Then you have quotes from page 300 and something, then page to page 13.
And this pattern proceeds throughout the whole book, with the quotes put into the book seemingly at random.
I think the quotes could easily have been inserted at least in ascending page order,
and for a supposed high end book like this, I found the placement particularly annoying.
From the look of the design, I would hazard a guess
that this series was inspired by the success of the Seasons Classics,
which also reproduce timeless classics with distinctive cover designs
and have similar pull-out quotes throughout the text.
[♫ music ♫]
Now, let’s take a look at the rest of the series.
Here’s the children’s classic The Wizard of Oz by Lyman Frank Baum.
Again, a beautiful cover,
with the yellow bricks on the road that wind their way to the Emerald City all raised
on the front and back cover along with some of the flower beds.
[♫ music ♫]
But look at this – the first quote from page 108 is inserted at page 16
followed by one from page 107, then later on we get a quote from page 30 against page 52.
Again it seems completely random.
It’s hard to know what is going here -
did someone drop all the pages on the printing room floor and just stick them back in willy nilly?
[♫ music ♫]
Alright, our third book is the jazz age classic The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald.
This cover is really stunning in real life
the blues are gorgeous and the textural elements across the sky and lake really add to the depth of the image.
You even have Gatsby standing on the pier with his arms stretched out,
gazing at the classic, symbolic green light just beyond his grasp.
Fantastic.
[♫ music ♫]
And, even better, look at this –
the first pull quote is from page 3!
Followed by page 40, then page 70.
Finally, we have the quotes appearing in chronological order.
What a reading relief.
[♫ music ♫]
And last, but not least,
we have a multitude of genres being covered in this series
with the science fiction classic and sole female authored book with Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
I was really pleased to discover that this book also
has the pull quotes appearing in chronological order.
So, it seems someone just stuffed up with two of the books.
I’d say I hope they fix this in later printings,
but as I mentioned earlier the books are actually advertised on the Harper Collins website
as being “limited editions”.
However, there is nothing in the books themselves to support this,
and no mention on the publisher’s website of what the actual limitation might be,
so I’ll update in the comments below if I manage to find out what is going on there.
[♫ music ♫]
Finally, Harper Muse must be pretty confident
about the success of this series based on pre-sales,
because the second set of releases in the series
is already up for preorder.
Upcoming we have Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë,
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott,
Persuasion by Jane Austen and
- unusually for a classics series, but most welcome -
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below if you’d like to share.
Let us know which one of the cover designs is your favourite?
Til next time, Bye!