About the cover illustration

The figure on the cover of .NET Core in Action bears the caption “A Turk in a pelise.” The members of the Turkish court would wear certain outer robes linked to the season; of course, it was the sultan who decided when the season had changed and so the robes should too. The illustration is taken from a collection of costumes of the Ottoman Empire published on January 1, 1802, by William Miller of Old Bond Street, London. The title page is missing from the collection, and we’ve so far been unable to track it down. The book’s table of contents identifies the figures in both English and French, and each illustration also bears the names of two artists who worked on it, both of whom would no doubt be surprised to find their art gracing the front cover of a computer programming book 200 years later.