In George Eliot 's The Mill on the Floss (1860), Mr Tulliver uses the phrase in discussing Daniel Defoe 's The History of the Devil, saying how it was beautifully bound. The preceding version was then publicised by the 1946 murder mystery novel by Edwin Rolfe (de) and Lester Fuller, Murder in the Glass Room, in the form of "You can never tell a book by its cover. ''
who said do not judge a book by its cover
George Eliot Edwin Rolfe Lester Fuller