The 25 Most Iconic Book Covers of All Time

Edward McKnight Kauffer, who designed this cover, was known mostly for his poster art. It makes sense, therefore, that this cover is so eye-catching. The face on the cover is bathed in both light and shadow. The way the light appears to be falling from above as well as the criss-cross over the face perhaps allude to the beginning of the book. In it, the unnamed narrator describes his underground room lit with electricity stolen from the city’s grid.

A list of the most iconic book covers without a Robert McGinnis cover is no list at all, if you ask me. I had to choose this romance cover because it was ultimately too hot to handle! The first printing really has the hero’s buttcheeks hanging out like that. But the next one put a red starburst over his loins proclaiming the book a “coast-to-coast best seller.” McGinnis is known for long, leggy figures and dramatic scenes, and at age 96, he’s still working! Check out Hard Case Crime for his recent work.

Jason Ramirez and Nayon Cho designed this cover that makes excellent use of the elegant and classic Lydian font, which has been a popular choice for book covers in the past few years. The gold lines refer to the art of kintsugi, in which broken pottery is repaired using gold. This powerful image shows that in making her name public and telling her story, Miller’s trauma is part of her history, but certainly not all of her.

You know a book cover is iconic when it can be ported from book to movie franchise to theme park rides with ease. This cover by renowned designer Chip Kidd is a quintessential example of this. There’s a great episode of the Spark & Fire podcast about the creation of this cover. The image of Michael Crichton’s fax to proclaim “Wow! Fucking Fantastic Jacket” is not to be missed.

This whole series has unforgettable covers, predominantly designed by David Mattingly. First published in 1996, Animorphs quaintly shows what computer graphics were capable of, regarding digital morphs between images. These books traumatized a generation with their depiction of the horrors of war and the loss of innocence that comes with it. Aimed at kids on the brink of puberty, these book covers do a great job showing how scary and confusing it is to go through big changes.

There are those lamenting the “book blob” era of cover design, but I’m never going to be mad at bold, colorful covers. I think The Mothers, published in 2016, somewhat ushered in this era. With lines that perhaps suggest a human profile, or maybe not, Rachel Willey’s cover design eschews making an obvious and reductive choice for what motherhood looks like. The book explores the slipperiness of the concept as well. It’s an enigmatic and intriguing cover.

No cover more terrifying! This cover has haunted me since I was a child, and Dom Brautigam is responsible for this nightmare. (LeVar Burton is responsible for others.) The first printing had a cover showing the eyes floating against a blue background. That cover had holes cut where the eyeballs were, like Flowers in the Attic’s attic, so upon opening it, one witnessed the (shudder) bandaged hand. I’m sure that was a hell of a reveal, but I find the full hand image on the cover the iconically scary one.

Maybe it’s a cop-out to include a picture book in this list, but this one’s cover really does a lot of work. With the traffic light, we are instantly placed in an urban setting, a rare sight in picture books when this was published. Meanwhile, the child looking at his fresh footprints in the snow evokes the sense of wonder snowy days create. Creating magic out of the ordinary is something children are so good at, and this classic book celebrates that. 

Talk about the line between pain and pleasure. This cover photograph by Peter Hujar is titled “Orgasmic Man,” in case you were wondering what’s really going on. Devoid of that context, it truly is impossible to say what the person on this cover is experiencing. Hanya Yanagihara’s books are for readers who, counterintuitively, enjoy books that will destroy them, so this image couldn’t be more appropriate.

A Farewell to Arms was the first work of fiction to be given the Penguin paperback treatment, and the iconic status of this design is quite undeniable. Only the general fiction in the series was orange, but that color certainly eclipsed the purple of essays and the green of crime novels, etc. Edward Young created the design, including the original penguin logo. That penguin has undergone changes over the years, and my personal favorite has a little roll of pudge and a jaunty foot in the air. What makes these covers so iconic is their collectability. They were color coded and numbered, making them something you wanted to line up on a shelf rather than discard.

This book made a huge splash, partially due to its brash title, and I think also partially due to this genius cover design by Faye Orlove. The pastel colors and square-within-a-square design call up a nostalgia for ’90s books. It’s a little Baby-Sitters Club, a little Judy Blume. The same way people have nostalgia for iCarly. But the title undercuts that wholesome vibe entirely. The pink urn and Jennette’s bemused, indifferent expression is icing on a messed up cake. Truly unforgettable.

This cover, by Greg Stadnyk, uses birds to represent Red and Blue, the time-traveling spies in this epistolary novella. They’re organic, but also a little glitchy. What a perfect way to show that even in a futuristic time war, the human desire to love and be loved cannot be denied. The cover is distilled to only these two characters, with no background detail, the way this novella takes such an expansive context to craft an intimate story.

As a die-hard lover of gothic literature, I had to include a “women running from houses” cover on the list of iconic book covers. It’s hard to choose a single cover to encapsulate this trend, so I picked one cover that includes many of the important features. This one, by Lou Marchetti, features a flowing white gown, a creepy castle/manor, and a conspicuously phallic turret with its light on. There are so many wild and wonderful variations on this theme, and we have other artists, including Victor Prezio, Elaine Duillo, Robert McGinnis, Walter Popp (no relation), George Ziel, Charles Geer, Renato Fratini, Allan Kass, and Harry Bennett, among others, to thank.

It’s rare for nonfiction book covers to get a lot of love, so let’s show some for this one, designed by Bookbright Media. As the author states in the book, “thick” is a descriptor in sociology to mean that a description is given plenty of context to situate it. The cover shows the other meaning of thick, with that wide H forming something like a torso whose figure is not an hourglass. It implies we will indeed be examining bodies and beauty standards. Thick is a work by a Black author whose work engages with race a lot. The stark black color centers that Blackness. Lastly, the handwriting look of the subtitle and author’s name lend a personal touch, letting us know not to expect stodgy academic prose.

Of course Frankenstein has received countless covers over the years, some of them iconic in their own right. But I chose this one to recognize the amazing era of pulp covers. The early days of the pulp paperback included reprints of classic titles in cheaper editions. And plenty got pulped-up covers that were, like this one, a little misleading about the content. This art style is undeniably striking. While I couldn’t find the artist of this particular cover, some artists known for their pulped classic covers are James Avati, Mitchell Hooks, Charles Binger, Ken Riley, Stanley Meltzoff, and Tom Dunn.

I think this book cover, designed by Ben Wiseman, is iconic for similar reasons that I’m Glad My Mom Died is iconic. They both call to an entire genre of literature with their cover design. Unlike I’m Glad My Mom Died, however, this one embraces rather than subverts that genre. Giving the title and the author’s name nearly equal real estate on the cover calls up dishy books by authors like Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, and Danielle Steel. The author’s name is meant to tell more about what you’re in for than the title does. With this cover design, Kevin Kwan joins the ranks of authors you associate with breezy but gripping poolside reading. This book promises to be rife with excess, drama, and plenty of name-dropped fashion brands.

Okay, so John Carter, the protagonist of this book, never took off as a cinematic franchise the way, say, Star Wars has. But tell me, how do we even have Star Wars without book covers like this? Anyone who’s lusted after Princess Leia in the gold bikini can thank artist Frank Frazetta. The way this 1970 cover blends sword and sorcery imagery with outer space imagery, in a pulpy style, sets a visual standard for an adventurous style of sci-fi. And you know a book cover is iconic when the original oil painting sells for $1.2 million at auction!

The hardcover release of Shatter Me had a cover that was a little generic, if I’m honest. It was a girl in the gown, not hard to find in YA fantasy, in 2011. This paperback cover features art by Colin Anderson, inspired by a photograph by Sharee Davenport and cover design by Cara E. Petrus. Now we’re talking. Eyes are reliable for grabbing attention, featured on so many of these covers. This eye motif carries into the rest of the covers for the series, making them a cohesive and arresting set. But then the details pull you in. Mafi’s use of strikethroughs, as seen on the cover’s tagline, creates an instant turbulence challenging readers to discover the truth for themselves.

I don’t think this cover is iconic because everyone reads this book in high school. It’s iconic on its own merit, embodying the melancholy jazz age style found in the book. Francis Cugat designed the cover, and he was a true one-hit wonder in this field, as this was the only book he designed in his career. Fitzgerald describes Daisy as a “girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs.” Turns out, he may have been inspired to write that by receiving early versions of the cover before the book was complete. It certainly would explain how the text and cover are so perfectly integrated.