Joseph Connolly - book collector, antiquarian dealer, and acclaimed novelist - has compiled an impassioned guide and love letter to the designers, artists and authors at the heart of Faber's design story. From its beginnings in the 1920s and 1930s on to the classic years of innovation under Berthold Wolpe after the War, and from the celebrated period of collaboration with Pentagram on to the modern day, here is, as he concludes in his preface, 'a lavish celebration of the art and beauty of these magnificent covers, from just the first eighty years'.

Even gazing at these so slim spines, I was taken. And at the foot of each one, the word Faber. The vitality of the design, even on these very narrow spines, compelled me to slide out the books. And the covers! Oh my goodness, the covers ... the colour, strength and typography were not at all brash, but merely dynamic: here, I thought, was splendour. And it was the covers that encouraged me to open the books. And to read. And then to discover.