Worcester evening gazette. Easter souvenir (1896) - 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 paper spends its Easter budget on a single keepsake image and then labels it a prize design, which converts an expensive print run into a reason to buy and to save the copy. Framing the angel twice - a floral border around a bordered plate - makes an ordinary newsprint cover read as a hung picture rather than a page. The one line of selling copy is buried in the caption cartouche and links art to content, transferring the reader's admiration of the illustration onto the fiction inside, which is the only thing actually being sold.
Steal this when
Use this when a routine, disposable issue lands on a holiday and you want people to keep it: commission one strong image, credit and award it, and run a single caption line that routes attention from the art to the content you want read.