• 31 Vintage Posters That Demand You Pick Up a Book

    From Maurice Sendak to Keith Haring, the Very Best Reading Propaganda

    We can all agree that propaganda is bad. Right? But wait, let me ask you: what about literary propaganda? That is, what if you encounter a poster, and it slyly, via trickery, encourages you to read more, or visit your library, or—gasp—spend some of that hard-earned money on a book? Well, that must be evil. Except instead, it is awesome—and so are some of the pieces of propaganda in question. Below, a necessarily incomplete collection of old posters—some created by literary masters like Maurice Sendak and Chris Van Allsburg, others by great artists like Keith Haring, that celebrate and promote literary causes and events: Book Week, your local library, the now-defunct New York is Book Country festival, and reading in general. Scroll on, and if you find yourself swayed by the sneaky rhetoric and brightly-colored images, well—good.

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    Maurice Sendak, 1979 Maurice Sendak, 1989 Maurice Sendak, 1985 Keith Haring, 1985 William Steig, 1972 Edward Gorey, 1979 Chris Van Allsburg, 1990 Chris Van Allsburg, A poster to promote public libraries as a reference/resource, using a common question asked of libraries by phone, 1983 Ezra Jack Keats, 1965 Emily Arnold McCully, 1969 circa 1910 Anita Lobel, 1977 Elizabeth Tyler Wolcott, 1949 For Book Week, c. 1920s From the Library of Congress Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1941 From the Library of Congress Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1939 1959 Gregg Arlington, c. 1936-1940. From the Library of Congress Work Projects Administration Poster Collection. From the Library of Congress Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, V. Donaghue, 1940. Library of Congress, 1961 From the American Library Association Collection, 1987 Library Association Collection, c. 1921 Sadie Wendell Mitchell, “Dig,” 1909 Perhaps the most famous of the famous ALA READ posters, starring David Bowie, 1987 Another awesome ALA READ poster, featuring Denzel Washington, 1990 Gerard Dowe, c. 1950 Printed in 1957 for a 1958 exhibition/celebration of the printed word in Paris Paul Rand, 1958 Noel Fontanet, 1920 Jessie Willcox Smith, Book Week, 1924 Helen Sewell, 1941



    Emily Temple
    Emily Temple
    Emily Temple is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020. You can buy it here.
    https://www.emilytemple.net/





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