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Can you judge a book by its cover?

16/11/2020

We're often advised not to judge a book by its cover. However, publishers put a lot of thought into creating book designs that make particular titles appeal to particular kinds of readers.

How good are you at 'reading' book covers when the titles have been removed? Take this quiz, created by the University and BBC Arts, and see how clever design might be influencing your book choices.

All the covers in this quiz feature in the BBC's list of 100 titles in The Novels That Shaped Our World.

To find out more about how we make judgements about novels - and about how novels can come to define us - you can join today's The Novels That Shaped Our World panellist Kit de Waal in a free online discussion as part of this year's Being Human Festival.

During the online session, ‘Novel Perceptions: towards an inclusive canon’, a new project by University of Wolverhampton and the Dutch Huygens Institute, will be launched. In this project, researchers will investigate readers’ opinions about the literary quality of contemporary fiction.

Take the quiz

For more information please contact the Corporate Communications Team.

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