The story
In the 1700s and 1800s, a handsome leather binding with gold lettering said a lot about a book’s owner. It said less about what was inside. A grand cover could hide a dull or foolish book.
People were making the point long before the exact wording settled. In 1708, an English writer warned against judging “a Book by its Title-Page.” In 1821, a Boston newspaper made the same complaint about a book’s outside show.
By 1849, a Boston paper ran the headline “Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover.” In 1854, another American paper said “we must never judge a book by its cover” and called it an old proverb.
In 1860, George Eliot put the idea into The Mill on the Floss. The miller Mr. Tulliver admits he bought a set of books mostly because they had a fine binding. One of them turned out to be something he had no business owning, cover or no cover.
