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.
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 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.
