A frontispiece is a picture at the start of a book, usually on the left-hand page, looking across at the page with the title on it. Older books loved them: a portrait of the writer, a scene from the story, sometimes a grand drawing. You still find them in handsome hardbacks and in reprints of old books. It is a book-world word, a little old-fashioned and a little proud — publishers and librarians use it without thinking; most people would just say ‘the picture at the front.’ Though actually, it is not the cover, and it is not the title page itself. It is the picture that faces the title. (The spelling looks as if piece is in it, because English speakers long ago started writing it that way — a folk story in the letters, not how the word was born.) The same word once also named the decorated face of a building, like a forehead of stone; in ordinary reading now, the book picture is the sense you will meet.