Once a book goes into the public domain, publishers everywhere are in a hurry to print copies or make them available as digital works. The cover art can be an afterthought, maybe an assignment for an intern. How else could you explain such bad covers as Mary Shelley with her hand on the knee of Frankenstein's monster, and Jane Austin's British love story emblazoned with a picture of an American flag?
I have collected a number of these very fun, very bad covers below. All of these covers are “real,” that is, attached to books that are at least nominally available for purchase, though many are digital covers for digital editions. You’ll find a number of covers from Wordsworth Classics, premier publisher of badly Photoshopped book covers, but many more from the wilds of digital independent publishing. Some are merely ugly; others make it clear that no one involved in the creation of the cover cracked open the book.
Yeah, the best worst ones are those that have nothing to do with the contents. Not reading the book is the only way to explain a cover of Hamlet that's a naked woman with a seashell. See all these covers at LitHub. -via Digg