Wikipedia:WikiProject Free book covers

This is a project to replace modern book covers used to illustrate articles about books in the public domain. These images are not really acceptable under the "replaceable" clause of our fair use policy,[1] since the books' original covers, title pages, etc. would be free. The list below includes articles that rely on such illustrations unnecessarily, and, where they've been found, links to images that could replace those illustrations.

There are several very good reasons to do this:

  • Our policy states that free images are always preferable to non-free images.[2]
  • Including an image of the first edition is much more encyclopedic; it provides real information about the book, rather than about a modern publisher.
  • It educates our users and the public about the history of these books and about the value of freely licensed material.

Volunteers needed

You can do any of three things:

  1. Look for articles on books published in the US before 1923 (as well as most other books published before that date as well, and all published before 1909[3]) that use copyrighted, modern book covers as illustrations. Category:Books by year and its many subcategories are useful. Add them to the list if they're not already on it.
    • Another good place to look is Category:Book covers, though it is huge. Some of those images are actually PD images, which are mistagged (only fair use covers belong in that category)--if the images are clearcut public domain, it would be very useful to change the tags on those images.
  2. Look for public domain images--covers, title pages, illustrations, etc.--on the web. Library and academic sites are good. Auction/rare book dealer sites can be good. Project Gutenberg has a few images, not many. Generally, title pages are actually preferable to covers, since they have more content. Add the link next to the book title. Note that only plain reproductive photographs of two-dimensional objects are ineligible to copyright (see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.). Modern photos that show only the title page or the front cover are ok, but modern photos that show the old books as 3D objects are covered by the photographer's copyright: do not use those, unless the images themselves are explicitly released under a free license.
  3. Upload a PD image from one of the links below (to Commons only if you're sure it's public domain worldwide; if it's {{PD-US}}, or if you're not sure, upload it to Wikipedia), replace the existing image in the article, and tag the old one {{orfud}}. Leave a gentle note on the uploader's talk page explaining why it's better to use PD cover images for PD books, or just cut and paste the template below, replacing the parameters with the filenames of the old and new images. Strike out the book title on the list, but don't remove it, when done.
    • Possible edit summary: Replacing fair use cover with free image; [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Free book covers|volunteers needed]]
    • Possible talk page message: {{Covermessage|Image:old|Image:new}}~~~~

Useful links

  • commons:Category:Book covers--our own collection, many of which are not on Wikipedia yet
  • British Library (possibly ineligible because of the logo in the corner of each one, though in some cases these could be cropped out)
  • Beinecke Library
  • Leeds Library adopt-a-book
    • Also try doing a google search using "site:leeds.ac.uk"
  • Brown U. exhibit on Bernard Shaw--full of great stuff
  • Virginia Tech image database--good theatre collection
  • Southern American Lit. from U. North Carolina--many images
  • 19th cent. American journal collection at Cornell--if you know when an American novel was serialized and in what journal (which is usually in our article), you can just go to that issue using the browse feature.

Books in the public domain using copyrighted book covers as illustrations

Note: This list is several years out of date. There is no point in striking entries right now, unless someone wants to restart this.

Old list of titles and sources for reference purposes, out of date
A

B

  • Barchester Towers
  • Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ Lots of cover images from lots of different editions, including the very first one. (Small and may need a little cropping. Maybe ineligible because spine is visible in original image and thus 3D?)
  • The Betrothed rather poor quality title page; we can do better, I think
  • Black Beauty Cover of first edition, with handwritten dedication by author, auctioned off at Christie's for £33,000 in June 2006.
  • The Bostonians serialized
  • The Brothers Karamazov First page of original Russian edition, TOC from Ruskii Vestnik (the paper where it appeared in serialized form); both from [1].

C

D

E

  • Emma replaced with Image:Emma title page 1909.jpg
  • An Essay on the Principle of Population FE title page, also see [3] (linked at [4]) for the title page of Malthus's Prinicples of Political Economy.
  • Ethan Frome FE cover FE cover
  • Eugene Onegin
  • The Europeans serialized
  • Exiles (play)--I believe the cover there--it's Huebsch--is the first American edition, 1918. Can we confirm this?
    • Don't know. But in any case, here's the title page of the very first edition (London: Grant Richards, 1918). Lupo 23:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Saw that. Doesn't the hand make it not a simple copy, and thus copyrighted? Chick Bowen 23:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I would've been bold and cropped it to only use the right page. Yes, the hand may make the image as a whole copyrighted. But the reproduction of this book page surely falls under Bridgeman. I would say their copyright might extend to the hand and the idea of placing it in the lower left corner, but the rest is a normal reproductive photograph. Dunno if that reasoning is sound. It's in analogy to texts: I could publish a collection of PD texts, write a preface, and I would get a copyright on the preface and the selection of texts, but not on the texts themselves. We do similar things with paintings: On Commons:Derivative_works there's even a recommendation to crop away the frame (if shown in an image). Again, I'm not sure whether that's truly sound advice... Lupo 23:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • OK, I went with it. Chick Bowen 00:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

F

  • Fanny Hill — given the history of this book, a "first edition" might be hard to find. Cover of an English edition printed in Paris. Year seems to be 1838? (The image is small and of low quality, I can't make out the second digit of the year...) A 1910 French edition by Guillaume Apollinaire also exists. Both are rather unspectacular. Here's a ca. 1910 U.S. cover (from [5]), and here are some illustrations by Paul Avril (1843-1928)[6][7] from a 1908 French publication.
    • That 1910 one seemed best, though tamer of course than some of those illustrations--I uploaded it at Image:Fanny Hill 1910 cover.jpg. Others can be uploaded as well of course. Chick Bowen 05:06, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Framley Parsonage serialized
  • Frankenstein An image has been uploaded--Image:Frankenstein.1831.inside-cover.jpg. The previous one was moved further down on the page but remains; whether it is acceptable as fair use is debatable but may be beyond the scope of this wikiproject. Chick Bowen 04:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

G

H

I

J

L

M

  • Madame Bovary done: Image:Madame Bovary 1857.jpg.
  • The Man Who Laughs manuscript page
  • Manon Lescaut The French WP article Manon Lescaut has a number of illustrations: first page, The Chevalier des Grieux meets Manon Lescaut, des Grieux visits Manon, Manon's death. All illustrations by Jean-Jacques Pasquier (engraver, died 1785). Comparing the first page and Manon's death with [11], I think that all four images at the French WP are from the 1753 Amsterdam book edition and thus actually PD-old (and not CC-1.0, as stated at the French WP).
  • Mansfield Park (novel) needs to be edited down to just title page
  • Marius the Epicurean Luxury binding done by Toof & Co. in 1900 (with spine, tilted), from [12]
  • Merryland
  • The Minister's Wooing lousy cover and spine
  • Moby-Dick FE title page
  • The Moonstone FE title page
  • The Mystery of the Yellow Room FE cover (Editions Pierre Lafitte, 1908). Also: a portrait of the fictional detective Rouletabille as it appeared on the cover of L'illustration on October 19, 1907. Both done.

N

O

P

Q

  • Quo Vadis (novel)
    • Google Books has a 1897 edition of Quo Vadis [15] (with a watermark :-\). Would that be okay? --Iamunknown 06:14, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes. The watermark should be removed in an image editing program. I'll get around to this at some point if no one else does. Chick Bowen 21:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I did this. Once I discovered Google Books's HTML option it got a lot easier. Chick Bowen 21:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

R

S

T

V

W

Nonfiction

A

  • The American Scene
  • America's National Game (the image that is there may be the first edition, mistagged)—Yup, it's the first edition (American Sports Publishing Co., NY, 1911)[19]. Better image (without the glare from the flash) is available at Flickr. (Flickr user claims "all rights reserved", but doesn't this fall under Bridgeman?)
  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin done: Image:Memoirs of Franklin.jpg. There's also the cover of the very first French edition at [20], but it's inside a Flash animation... can it be extracted?
    • That would be great to have, but I have no idea how or if it's possible. Chick Bowen 21:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes it is (at least in this case). The Flash thingy is actually a program that loads the image (in 15 tiles at the largest magnification). I got those 15 image files and stitched them together; I'll upload it tomorrow, though (it needs a little rotation and cropping, and I don't have the right tools on the machine I'm using right now). Lupo 21:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Done. Lupo 08:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Autobiography of Charles Darwin done: Image:Darwin Life And Letters.jpg.
  • The Autumn of the Middle Ages

B

C

D

  • The Decline of the West (existing image has no source, no publisher, no indication of year) —was mistagged. It is the cover of the 1922 first edition of vol. II. Source added, tagged {{PD-US}}. Lupo 13:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Democracy in America 1848 title page

E

F

G

I

  • Innocents Abroad current image allegedly is from a "pirated British edition"[21] with an unknown year. gutenberg.org has PD images of an 1884 cover and the FE title page (1869), plus lots of other illustrations.
  • The Interpretation of Dreams FE title page (German), linked at [22] (see also LoC). Large; stamp in top right corner of previous owner should be GIMPed away.
  • Italian Hours

J

L

M

O

P

R

S

T

W

Participants

Note: anyone can participate: this is a Wiki, remember? If you'd like to help without listing yourself here, that's fine. And if you like to put your name here, that's cool, too.

  1. ^ For a lengthy and very useful discussion of the replaceability issue, see User:Chowbok/Robth's RFU Explanation.
  2. ^ And, indeed, the collective character of the project should incline us even further in this direction than policy currently states. As Jimbo Wales has said, "My own view, which is at the extreme end of the spectrum I know, and therefore not (yet) formal policy in every case, is that we ought to have almost no fair use, outside of a very narrow class of images that are of unique historical importance."
  3. ^ See WP:PD for a thorough explanation of the issue. Lupo summarizes it nicely:
    "On the English Wikipedia, the general consensus is to apply the pre-1923 rule to all works, even to works first published outside of the U.S. In the U.S., any work published before 1923 anywhere in any language is in the public domain if it was published with a copyright notice. The pre-1923 rule also applies to works first published outside of the U.S. without a © notice, if they were published in English. It does not apply to works first published outside of the U.S. without a © notice in a foreign language: such works are PD for sure in the U.S. only if they were first published before 1909. All works first published outside of the U.S. in any language without © notice are also PD in the U.S. if they were already out of copyright in their country of origin on the URAA date (January 1 1996 in most cases). See Peter Hirtle's chart, footnote 11.

Free book covers

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