Fringilla or Tales in verse by Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1895) - poster
The pattern
This still is filed under Lettered cover hook.
Define
The cover is the hook, and the hook is lettering: a title treated as an image.
Mechanism
Type as bait. The words are drawn so they stop the hand before the contents are known.
Verdict
A journal, book, or issue must sell itself on a rack or a feed
Why it works
The design borrows every signal of an old printed book - blackletter, rubricated initials, an interlaced vine border, Roman numerals - so the announcement transfers the prestige of the Kelmscott revival onto a contemporary title. Ruling the text into stacked compartments imposes a strict reading order on lettering that is otherwise hard to scan, which is what keeps a dense Gothic page usable. Printing the illustrator's name at the same size as the author's is a commercial decision, not a courtesy: by 1895 Bradley's name sold books, so it is treated as a second headline.
Steal this when
Use this when the buyer is a collector and the object's craft is the purchase - special editions, limited runs, anything where scarcity and making are the value. The structure also works whenever a named creator carries more pull than the title, and you want both credits to read as equal draws.