"A jacket assignment was always a special little thrill. It was another chance to strut your stuff and to have your work reach a national circulation. Every new jacket presented its own set of problems, but, within the limits of the publisher’s and author’s style or idiom, it was also an opportunity to do something fresh. Good reference sources of allegorical and historical images or better still, one’s own mental library of metaphorical and allusive motifs, were essential if one were to offer more than mere calligraphic renderings of title, etc. The greater one’s grasp of literary style and the better one’s knowledge of contemporary authors and subject matter, the more likely were commissions of interesting and significant books. But almost everybody did a share of pot-boilers, too."

--Charles Skaggs

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