Meadow-grass by Alice Brown (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 price is set in the same breath as the title, at the top, in display size - no coyness, no reveal later. The single-ink olive ground does the work a photograph cannot: it makes the whole sheet the colour of the thing being sold, so the title is illustrated by the paper itself. The keyline box frames the illustration as a specimen page, which tells the browser this is a book of pictures-in-prose rather than a novel. The publisher's device planted mid-scene borrows the trade-mark habit from patent medicine and applies it to a literary imprint.
Steal this when
You are selling a low-priced item where the name is the whole atmosphere and the price is not an objection - state both in the first block and let one flat colour carry the mood. Good model for a book, album or product cover where the title deserves to be a landscape rather than a claim.