It is perhaps fit that in rhetoric and composition, most book-cover illustrations show nothing but text. This doesn't mean, however, that such covers are worth only one thousandth's of a picture. Imaged words, as conveyed by typeface, are images. Graphic features such as font style, font size, color, and layout carry clear messages.

Consider self-instructional writing textbooks. These are books aimed for readers who want to learn to speak and write better, and to do so out of school, on their own. The genre has been around for at least two centuries. John Rippingham's Rules for English Composition, and Particularly for Themes; Designed for the Use of Schools, and in Aid of Self-instruction was published in 1812 (London: Longman, Green) and went through many editions. On the other side of the Atlantic, J. H. Hull's Lectures on the Agreement and Government of the English Language: Designed Expressly for Mutual or Self Instruction was published in 1836 (Pittsburgh, PA: Johnston and Stockton). Later in the century, the self-help and progressive movements gave a boost to such books. Immigrants whose English was shaky and adults who had not completed formal education turned to texts such as C. C. Shaeffer's Self-help by Self-work: The Automatic Teacher of English Reading (Writing) and Spelling (Pitman, 1890), Michael West's Look and Speak: A Self-teaching Speaking and Writing Introduction to the New Method Series (Longmans, 1936), and Frederick George French's Self-help Exercises for Practice in English (Oxford University Press, 1938). After WWII autotutorial machines gave self-instructional textbooks another boost, which can still be seen in the book market (e.g., J. William McVey and Steven J. Willett's Practical English and the Command of Words . . . Presented in Fifty-Two Self-teaching Units (English Language Institute of America, 1990) or Patricia Osborn's How Grammar Works: A Self-teaching Guide (2nd edition, Wiley, 1999).

How do the cover illustrations of such books promote their motives? Consider two quite different examples. Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers needs no introduction, but A New Self-teaching Course in PRACTICAL ENGLISH and Effective Speech probably does. It was written by Estelle Bell Hunter and published by the Better-Speech Institute of America in several editions (1933 to 1944) as a boxed set of fifteen pamphlets. Illustrated above is the cover to the box. Everything about the typpography speaks of learnedness and respectability, from the solemn maroon color to the erudite serif font to the aristocratic blazon-like slant of the words across the cover. The message to the user is that this course in rhetoric will confer the same respect as would a course in the most prestigious institution of learning.

The text on Elbow's paperback cover (Oxford University Press, 1973) makes a different point. The salient word, "writing," is handwritten in a workman-like script, half cursive, half printed. The scrawl, the red color, and the encircling descender of the "g" clearly imply a correction on a theme. But it is "teachers" who are being corrected. The message is that this self-teaching course in rhetoric will be unlike any institution-sanctioned course, in fact will be better. This book is not for readers who want something as good as formal education offers but for readers who may be rebelling against formal education itself.

I should add that Estelle Bell Hunter (what a sonorous name!) deserves some study. She was born in 1885. In the 1920s she published books on infant mortality and on the organization of public-health nursing agencies, and then Modern Filing Manual (1923), which remained in print for two decades. Her last work, published in 1939, has the modest title of Personality development: A practical self-teaching course, comprising health, posture, dress, grooming, voice and speech, conversation, social and business etiquette, self-confidence, poise, living and working with others, acquiring background, improvement of mind and character, achieving success and happiness. My thanks to Patty Ericsson, who introduced me to Estelle Bell Hunter and who provided the photograph of the fifteen pamphlets; and to Tim McGee, who sent me the photograph of the cover.

RH, January 2006