The Penguin Classics with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith are now available on Amazon — the series includes Cranford, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Wuthering Heights. (Design*Sponge recently posted an interview with the designer.)

While I realize that part of the concept behind the designs is to create an object that is inherently decorative, meant to look pretty on a well-curated bookshelf or in a tablescape, there is still a part of me — a petulant, greedy part of me, mind you — that wished that such bindings existed for the kinds of books I’d actually want to buy (or have another copy of) — perhaps with decorations inspired by the content, or by the period in which they were written.

A Decameron with an oakleaf pattern like the zaffera a rilievo maiolica? (Seems properly Florentine, and contemporary to the book’s period, though oakleaves are not, to my recollection, mentioned in the book at all.)

The Book of the City of Ladies with a pattern of women’s faces (perhaps from memorial brasses)? (But the Penguin Classics series doesn’t seem to feature many human figures.)

The Canterbury Tales with a pattern based on the encaustic floor tiles? (Although I see that there’s a hardcover version available with illustrations by William Morris & Edward Burne-Jones [and “translation” by Frank Ernest Hill] that certainly looks quite pretty.)

Some sort of “sun-in-splendor” pattern for Dante’s Divine Comedy?

Hah! I know — wells (you know, like what you’d call a “wishing well” if you saw it in someone’s garden today) for Julian of Norwich. Get it? Huh? (Well, maybe it’d sell better with zombies.)