For a long time we've been collecting these German books, the Insel-Bücherei, for their beautiful patterned covers. They're the same size as a Ladybird Book, but with finer card covers. They were produced from 1912 onwards: economical editions of all sorts of classic texts, produced to a high aesthetic standard. They really are lovely. And there are hundreds of them: over 1400 in fact. Plus all the similar books they inspired, like these wonderf [...]
