Please judge a book by its cover

SLOUGH, ENGLAND:

If there was a prison sentence for the most revolting book covers ever printed (and why does one not exist yet?), someone at British publishing house Penguin would be locked in solitary confinement. According to a rather horrific report in the Daily Mail, Penguin, in all its wisdom, has opted to release a BookTok-friendly complete set of all six of Jane Austen’s novels, set to be unleashed upon the literary world next month.

Austen fans are advised to tread with caution because the following contains descriptions of a disturbing nature. Please do not proceed any further unless you also enjoy rubbernecking at car crashes, spent your youth sifting through the photos of a doctor relative’s medical textbooks, and/or stoically braved Netflix’s abhorrent take on Persuasion just to prove a point. Keep a vomit bucket handy.

How bad is it?

Astonishing though it may be to believe, the results are much worse than Persuasion, but fairly on par with anything containing ‘Tok’ in the name. We may as well start with the cover for the new and unimproved edition of Pride and Prejudice, which features a Mr Darcy airdropped straight out of Bridgerton. Our revamped Darcy favours a shimmery blue-purple coat atop a set of violent orange trousers because as we all know, orange trousers were very much in vogue during the Regency era in Austen’s time.

Elizabeth Bennet, boasting a fashionable Dora the Explorer haircut, is no shy, retiring wallflower either. She is dressed in a deep pink blouse above an orange skirt (because why should her hero get all the orange glory?) Since we have not already had enough orange, the entire background has been devoted to this migraine-inducing shade, with the title splashed on in pink to ward off any male readers who may have picked up this Austen classic by accident. As the pièce de résistance, we are reminded that this hot-blooded romance is not set in Modern Times via a fan gripped rather coquettishly by Elizabeth.

At this juncture, you may be moved to ask, “Why, Penguin? Why?” However, Penguin has an answer prepared for this pained query.

“Like all the best romcoms, Austen’s novels are full of meet-cutes, missed connections and drama; they are masterclasses in the lost arts of stolen glances and breath-taking gestures,” boasts the Penguin website. For those of you who have not already fallen into a dead faint at this scandalous talk of meet-cutes, there is more. “With a stunning modern design and forewords from leading YA romance authors, this eye-catching six-book series is an open invitation to escape the brutal nonchalance of modern dating and embrace your inner romantic.”

In this stunning spirit, then, one’s inner romantic is summoned via Penguin’s Mansfield Park cover, which presents with a flourish a loose-haired Fanny Price wrapping her arms around her beloved Edmund Bertram. Sadly, Edmund did not get a reprieve from the orange Sharpie, as he is clad in a loose Hawaiian-style chequered orange shirt that was as in vogue during Regency England as Mr Darcy’s trousers. Sense and Sensibility, meanwhile, puts the spotlight on the Dashwood sisters in all their nail-painted glory. Eleanor has an Elsa-style braid draped over a bare shoulder, and Marianne is sporting a feathered hat that the real Marianne (at least the one inhabiting the pages of any version of Sense and Sensibility with sensible cover) could only dream of in lust.

Since we have already made it this far, we may as well wade through Austen’s remaining three covers. Emma features a devious-looking heroine in a mid-riff baring top alongside a man who one fervently hopes is the villainous (or at least as villainous as one can get in Austen’s mind) Frank Churchill, because no self-respecting Emma fan would accept any version of her actual love, the dreamy Mr Knightley, flaunting a hideous lemon-yellow blouse. Behind Emma stands the hapless Harriet Smith, who, for reasons unbeknownst to us, is clutching a pair of scissors. The only saving grace is that they are not orange. As for Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, expect further incongruous fashion alongside a mishmash of ethnicities (think Pocahontas’ original boyfriend before John Smith turned up) and yet another silly hat.

A fly on the wall

It is as if the creative head honchos at the Penguin art department had a meeting where a bright spark said, “Okay, what do we know about social mores and fashion in Regency England? Great, let’s drive it all to the nearest biohazardous waste dump.” Not to be outdone by this dazzling display of brains (which probably yielded a heartfelt series of high-fives), someone else, perhaps hoping to make a good first impression, presumably then piped up with, “After we have ditched everything we know about Austen, let us rescue some toxic waste for us to use!” And everyone applauded this genius as if they had been presented with the formula for cold fusion. There would have been further raucous applause as they all sat around to admire the rescued toxic heap of red-painted talons, hues of neon orange and painful purple, and the most outlandish hats they could find, surpassed only by the type of headgear favoured by Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie at British royal weddings.

Their intentions are noble, but as we are all old enough to know by now, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Penguin’s ostensible aim is to dupe innocent new readers into picking up Austen’s masterclass in wit, much like you would dangle a rattle before a baby. Unfortunately, Austenian wit is not what they are selling. What they are selling is airport chick lit laden with meet-cutes and stolen glances, wrapped in bright packaging indistinguishable from anything else adored by BookTok lovers, such as The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood or anything by Emily Henry, this century’s answer to a beach read.

The perfect cover exists

In a half-hearted defence of Penguin, Austen covers always traditionally erred on the more sleep-inducing side of boredom, crafted specifically to repel literature students, but at least no one could ever accuse them of flogging painted nails and orange trousers. By clever use of a boring cover as a gatekeeper, publishers ensured that only those worthy of Austen’s prose (or unwilling students) were granted entry to her witty nineteenth-century takedown of social norms. And anyway, Penguin’s crime against Austen is not only nauseating, it is also needless, because a brainiac at the publishing house has already seen to the production of beautiful cloth-bound editions of her books with which to lure shallow readers.

Is it ever okay to judge a book by its cover? Unfortunately, as we have concluded, Penguin’s answer to that question is ‘yes’. Ergo, to soothe this unsought assault on our vision, it is only fair that we judge Penguin for its covers. Judge them, and find them wanting.