The Boston Public Library has an extensive approach to the art of fore-edge painting, On the Edge, introducing the subject thusly:

"When you hold the covers of a book in your hands, you will see three edges and a spine. The top edge and bottom edge are obviously named, but the edge at which you open the book has an unfamiliar title. It is referred to as the FORE-EDGE. Originally this edge of the book was titled in ink for the purpose of identification. Then the old books were stacked one on top of the other with the edge facing outwards in order to read its title. In the beginning, there was no effort to beautify the fore-edge."

"By the sixteenth century, a Venetian artist, Cesare Vecellio, devised a way to enhance the beauty of a book by painting on its edges. The images, mostly portraits, were easily viewed when the covers of the book were closed. A century later in England, Samuel Mearne, a bookbinder to the royal family, developed the art of the 'disappearing painting' on the fore-edge of a book."

"'Imagine a flight of stairs, each step representing a leaf of the book. On the tread would be the painting and on the flat surface would be gold. A book painted and gilt in this way must be furled back before the picture can be seen.' (Kenneth Hobson, 1949). This is how a fore-edge painting works. When the book is closed, you do not see the image because the gilding hides the painting. But, when you fan the pages to show the painting at its best and hold them between your fingers or in a display press, the colorful picture appears as if by magic."

There's a gallery of fore-edge books at the BPL site. One example is Alexander Pope's residence shown on the edge of The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, another is The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, in this case Gertrude of Wyoming bordered with flowers.

The University of Florida "Special Collections has acquired a significant collection of both single fore-edge paintings and double fore-edge paintings. The collection was dedicated to the memory of the late Miss Nancy Karnes Bird, former Head of Special Collections from 1960 to 1974. Some fine examples of this British art of decorating the gilded fore-edge of a book with a hidden painting in the collection are a seven-volume set of The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (1846) with a different Lake District view on each volume; Vaughan's Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1847), showing a rural scene, and a miniature book of Isaac Williams' Thoughts in Past Years (1943), with a view of Strawberry Hill from the river hidden under gilt gauffered edges."

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