Project Gutenberg is an amazing resource for out-of-copyright old books, and one that has inspired many articles (especially in our 19th century magazines category) here at The New Leaf Journal. Many of the Project Gutenberg books (especially newer uploads) come with scans of the original covers. We modified a particularly good looking Gutenberg-scanned cover for use with our Guestbook. I came across another very nice cover while running some Gutenberg searches. This cover is for an 1898 edition of Bradford Torrey’s A World of Green Hills. See the cover below:

Project Gutenberg-scanned cover of 1898 edition of Bradford Torrey's book "A World of Green Hills." The binding on the left is dark green. Three white flowers with light green stems rise next to the dark green binding on a pale green binding. The stylized title text is on the top right.

This is a very pretty cover. I approve. Torrey was a prominent nature writer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We featured an excerpt of his work in my 2021 springtime reader. I have been meaning to read some of his work for a while. While you cannot judge a book by its cover, maybe the nice cover is telling me to start with virid hills.