Christmas Books from Cassandra's Collection...

Decorative Publishers' Christmas Bindings Click on the book, and, then, click on slideshow...Enjoy, and a blessed Christmas to all!

Falling Leaves

From an antique book, Falling Leaves: Songs and Sketches arranged by E. Nesbit & Robert Ellice Mack, which I recently purchased in upstate New York...

Favorite ♥ Places: “The Owl Pen”, Greenwich, New York

This summer I was blessed to once again visit one of my very favorite antiquarian bookshops, The Owl Pen, nestled in the beautiful, historic Washington County hill country near Greenwich, New York in the charming outbuildings of an old poultry farm.  

Although the drive to The Owl Pen can be somewhat daunting (signs are small and few and directions are confusing); yet the scenery  - verdant farmlands:

grazing Holsteins; old shuttered New England farm houses with their red barns; not too distant views of the Green Mountains of Vermont:

and the tree shaded, stone fence-lined, dirt Riddle Road which gives one the feeling of going back in time – makes the trip a delight.  

And, to a collector of late 19^th and early 20^th century decorative publishers’ bindings, The Owl Pen is a mother lode!  

This tucked-in-the-woods 51-year-old bookshop, which currently stocks about 80,000 books, is charming in its simplicity and hodgepodge organization. 

Edie Brown, co-owner of the shop, is most accommodating and helpful in locating her customers’ requests.  Edie located for me to peruse her copy of Richard Minsky’s “The Art of American Book Covers: 1875-1930" (which I have since ordered via her instructions) and pointed me in the direction of many wonderful finds – some rare initialed and un-initialed Margaret Armstrong covers, a couple of old James Fenimore Cooper titles, and several beautiful nature titles.   I was even able to locate a late 19^th century Sarah Wyman Whitman-designed John Burroughs title for my sister’s collection and a small leather devotional which I gifted to a friend. 

The grounds and views from The Owl Pen are lovely and browsers are invited by the owners to bring a picnic lunch.  Located at 166 Riddle Road, about 7 miles from Greenwich, New York, it is best to call ahead for directions at 518-692-7039.  This well-hidden gem of a book shop is well worth a visit on Wednesday through Sunday during its May through October season (noon to six) and by appointment in the winter.  I can hardly wait to go back during the majestic fall foliage!

A Book

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress or toil;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

~ Emily Dickinson

A selection of Cassandra's antique books with decorative publishers' bindings

Antique Decorative Publishers' Valentine's Bindings

...from Cassandra's collection...

A Margaret Armstrong binding

A page from "Sweethearts Always"



A Margaret Armstrong binding

A Margaret Armstrong binding

Happy Valentine's Day!

Margaret Hill McCarter, American Author (1860-1938)

"She dignifies and makes holy the tilling of the soil while not glossing over the hardships of life. It is drudgery, but she makes it a blessed drudgery, glorified by the loves of life, brightened by the higher vision - a drudgery which brings its own reward."

~ William E. Connelley, from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, 1918

A Hoosier-born author, brought up on a farm, located between Carthage and Charlottesville in Rush County, Indiana, Margaret “Maggie” Hill was the sixth of seven children of tenth generation Quakers. Her pioneer parents arrived in Indiana in 1858 from Randolph County, North Carolina. Raised in a home that stressed reading and education, Maggie, as a child, was considered shy, retiring and somewhat slow – a dreamer.

She certainly bloomed! After attending the Quaker Earlham College for 2 years, Margaret completed four years of coursework in two years to graduate with a degree in education from the State Normal School in Terre Haute. She began her professional career as an educator in Indiana public schools - near her family home, as an elementary “schoolteacher,"starting at the age of sixteen in 1876; in Rensselaer, as a high school principal; and in Goshen, as head of the English department. In 1888, at the age of 28, Margaret accepted a position as head of the English department at Topeka High School in Kansas, which she continued to fill until 1894.

Kansas became Margaret’s true and beloved home, where she married Topeka dentist, Dr. William Arthur McCarter, also Hoosier-born of pioneer parents, in 1890; raised 2 daughters and a son; and in 1901 began her long career as a prolific author. She edited, with biographical and bibliographical notes, several titles in the Crane Classics series, including: Hawthorne's Great Stone Face; and Miraculous Pitcher; Holmes' Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill, Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha; Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal; Shakespeare's King Lear and Merchant of Venice, and Whittier's Snowbound. She contributed poetry and short stories to various newspapers and magazines and authored many famous, well-loved books: A Bunch of Things Tied Up with Strings, 1901; Cuddy, and Other Stories, 1902; The Cottonwood's Story, 1903; Overflowing Waters, 1903; Christmas Eve in the Day Coach, 1905; Cuddy's Baby: A Story of the Kansas Folks; 1907; In Old Quivira, 1908; The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas, 1910; The Peace of the Solomon Valley, 1911; A Wall of Men, 1912; A Master's Degree, 1913; Winning of the Wilderness, 1914; The Corner Stone, 1915; Vanguards of The Plains, A Romance of the Santa Fe Trail, 1917; Paying Mother: The Tribute Beautiful, 1920; The Reclaimers, 1918; Homeland: A Present Day Love Story, 1922; Widening Waters, 1924; and The Candle in the Window, 1925. Margaret Hill McCarter is considered to be Kansas’ first popular female author for her many novels set against the Kansas prairie and for memorializing the early days of the state; and she remains, today, Kansas’ bestselling female author.

“No one has succeeded so well in translating the atmosphere of Kansas prairies and the experiences and ideals of Kansas men and women as has Margaret Hill McCarter, author of Middle West fiction. It has been her task to search out and clothe with fitting words the simplicity and the real grandeur of the people who made Kansas and are still its breath and life.”

~ William E. Connelley

Margaret was also very active in the founding and work of several women’s and literary clubs, historical societies, and civic organizations in both Indiana and Kansas and was well-known as an orator at civic and women’s groups and on the Chautauqua circuit. Her lecture on Abraham Lincoln was said to be one of the “most thrilling and comprehensive that has ever been delivered on this subject.”

Margaret’s participation in state and national Republican Party politics resulted in an invitation to address the 1920 convention, making her the first woman to speak to the national gathering. She was awarded three honorary degrees: a Master’s from Baker University and Doctorates from both Washburn and Emporia universities.

"From the shy child on the Indiana farm to the busy woman who has earned for herself both gold and fame is a far cry - and yet not so far. She began life as a dreamer…'Is your castle in the air?' asks Thoreau, 'Good, that is where it should be. Now put a foundation under it.' And the foundation which Margaret Hill McCarter has put under her air castles is builded on the solid rock.”

~ William E. Connelley

To view more of Margaret’s book covers and other memorabilia, click here. 

"Bright Ideas for Entertaining" for Valentine’s Day

(Another in a series of ideas for entertaining - before the advent of television and computers - from Cassandra’s antique1905 book, Bright Ideas for Entertaining, by Mrs. Herbert B. Linscott.)

"This description of a Valentine entertainment will be welcomed by those who desire novel and original ideas.

"We were received in a room decorated with wreaths, hung in festoons caught up at regular intervals by ribbon streamers. From the centre of each wreath hung hearts of parchment paper, tinted in blue and lettered in gold, each bearing a number and a fate of fortune."

"Suspended from a portiere rod between the hall and reception room were three hearts formed of heavy wire and carefully entwined with evergreen; above each one was a jingle. The first said:  Blow your bubble right through here, and you’ll be married before another year.  Above the second was: To be engaged this very week, number two is the one to take.  And the third had: A sad, an awful fate awaits the one who seeks me, for he or she will ever a spinster or bachelor be."

"On a small table nearby was an immense bowl filled with sparkling soapsuds, and also clay pipes decorated with little hearts. We first threw the bubbles off the pipes and then tried to blow them through hearts one and two with pretty little fans which were presented to us…"

"After this came a still merrier game. A low scrap basket was placed in the centre of the room, and the company arranged into opposing parties, forming two half circles around the basket. Cardboard hearts in two different colors were given the sides, an equal number to each side. We were then requested to try to throw them in the basket…When we had exhausted our cards those in the basket were counted, and the side having the most of its own color won the game."

"After this, a small blackboard was placed on an easel at one end of the room, and we were each in turn blindfolded, and handed a piece of chalk with which to draw an outline of a heart, and to write our name in the centre; the one doing the best to have a prize of a large candy heart."

"The partners for supper were chosen in a novel manner, the men being numbered, and the names of the girls written on slips of paper, rolled in clay in little pellets, then dropped into a bowl of water; the one to rise first belonged to the young man numbered one, and so on until each had his Valentine."

"A “Good Luck” supper was served in an adjoining room. Over the table, suspended from the chandelier, hung a floral horseshoe. In the centre and at each end of the table were fairy lamps surrounded by smaller horseshoes. The souvenirs and everything connected with the supper bore a symbol of good luck, the bonbons, cakes, and sandwiches taking the forms of either a clover-leaf or a horseshoe."

Sarah Wyman Whitman, Artist & Designer

Descended from prominent New England families, Sarah Wyman spent her early childhood in Baltimore among her Wyman relatives, in a cultivated and philanthropic environment. When she returned to Lowell, Massachusetts, at 11, she was educated at home by a gifted tutor, who shaped her lifelong dedication to learning.

After her marriage to successful Boston wool merchant, Henry Whitman, their move to Beacon Hill, afforded Sarah access to the wider world of the Boston elite: artists, writers, and educators. In 1868, she entered the studio of the successful, socially prominent  artist William Morris Hunt, who had only recently begun to welcome women as students.

Whitman's professional training was astonishingly brief. She studied with Hunt for three winters, studied drawing with his colleague William Rimmer, and twice—in 1877 and late 1878 or early 1879—went to France to study with Hunt’s former master, Thomas Couture. Although she lacked “just one year in the Academy,” considered a prerequisite for a successful career, she determined to move forward. In a letter to a patron, she described her “plan of life” as balancing a successful professional career amidst her obligations “as a householder,” her philanthropic interests, and her position in society. Even she admitted it was a “strange complex web” of a life.

By 1881, one critic already judged Whitman “as representative of successful women-painters in Boston.” She did not limit herself to accepted feminine subjects: portraiture, still lifes, and landscapes. She turned to the field of design, an approach—encouraged by Couture, echoed in the English Arts and Crafts Movement, and actively supported by her mentor and benefactor, Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton—that viewed art and life as inseparable.

Sarah Wyman Whitman Watercolor, "Niagara Falls," 1898

In the 1880s Whitman began to produce a steady stream of designs for book covers, stained glass, and interiors and became the first professional woman artist regularly employed by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin to give their mass-produced book covers a sense of simple elegance through line, color, and lettering. Responsible for a significant number of Houghton and Mifflin covers throughout the 1880s-90s, Whitman forged a new approach to book cover design using simple yet elegant forms, carefully chosen cloths and a distinctive lettering style. Her spare and elegant book designs, possibly in reaction to the rather “overwrought” covers - including the Eastlake style covers - that were the norm in the 1870s and 1880s, are important manifestations of the Art Nouveau style in America.

Examples of “overwrought” covers of the 1870s and ‘80s

“The typical book offered by the large American publishers of the mid-1880s sported a cover of moisture-resistant colored cloth, with a design die-stamped on it in black or gold.
That design, generally concocted by the die-maker himself, might be a riot of type faces,

borders, arabesques, and Japanese or Eastlake-style motifs.

It might reproduce an illustration from inside the book.

Or it might feature an incongruous vignette unrelated to the subject matter

– perhaps a volume of critical essays with a bunch of daisies thrown across the cover,’

as designer Alice C. Morse later commented dryly.

One thing you could count on, however: whatever the ornament, there was likely to be a lot of it.

That is, until Sarah Wyman Whitman came along.”

O’Donnell, Anne Stewart, “Telling Books by Their Covers,” Style 1900, Summer 2008.

Before the Curfew and Other Poems Chiefly Occasional, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1883.

Whitman reduced book decoration to the essential. Although she designed "special" editions in vellum with gold stamping, the majority of her work for the mass market employed two colors of cloth and a single color of ink for stamping. The production costs for Whitman's book covers were probably quite low when weighed against their effectiveness as advertising tools. In her “Notes of an Informal Talk on Book Illustration”, given before the Boston Art Students Association, Feb. 14, 1895, Whitman wrote: "…You have got to think how to apply elements of design to these cheaply sold books; to put the touch of art on this thing that is going to be produced at a level price, which allows for no handwork, the decoration to be cut with a die, the books to be put out by the thousand and to be sold at a low price…"

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's Stories, by Mrs. A.D. T. Whitney.  Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1893.

Many authors were her friends, including Sarah Orne Jewett, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Correspondence between Whitman and publishers testifies to her involvement in the entire process of bringing a design to the public, as well as to her desire to faithfully represent the author's vision.


The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1897

In 20 years, Whitman designed well over 200 books, frequently incorporating her design signature, a “flaming heart.”

Through her artistry and success, Sarah Wyman Whitman inspired many young women to enter the field of book design. Now, more than 130 years later, her work is still considered as unique and style-setting. Click here to view the notable, extensive Boston Public Library’s Sarah Wyman Whitman collection.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Whitman’s home in Boston's Beacon Hill was a salon for writers and artists, many of whom were her good friends. Her paintings can be found in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and her stained glass windows in Boston's Trinity Church and Parish House, New York's Grace Church, the Berwick Academy in Maine (Sarah Orne Jewett’s alma mater), and many smaller commissions for churches stretching from New York City to Albany, and along the New England coast from the North Shore to Cranberry Island, Maine. For Harvard’s Memorial Hall she designed both the elaborate south transept window and the Honor and Peace window on the south side of what is now Annenberg Hall. Fittingly, Whitman’s last works in glass—the panels Courage, Love, and Patience created for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition—are now installed in the Radcliffe College Room of the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library.

"Honor and Peace" Window
Annenberg Hall, Harvard University
Funded by the Class of 1865
"This window commemorates those who surrendered their lives in the War of the Rebellion.”

Whitman taught women’s Bible classes for 30 years, in winter at Trinity Church, in summer on the North Shore of Boston. She was a founder of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts; a benefactor of Radcliffe College, Howard University, Berea College, and Tuskegee Institute; and a generous patron of the arts.


An Island Garden, by Celia Thaxter. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895.

Although her last years were marred by illness, the result of overwork, she continued to create at a lessened pace. Her death in 1904 was deeply mourned…as William James wrote to his brother, Henry: “She leaves a dreadful vacuum in Boston…and the same world is here—but without her to bear witness.”

The Ramblers Lease, by Bradford Torrey. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1890

Antique Decorative Publishers’ Christmas Book Bindings

“There is nothing quite so important in a book from a commercial standpoint, as the cover. People buy a book largely from the cover. If it is artistic and attractive, they are induced to look at the book, when with a dull and ugly outside they would pass it by.”

~ An anonymous New Yorker quoted in an 1895 New York Times article about book cover art and designers

During the time period bounded by the late 1880s and World War I, book bindings were prized for the impressive beauty and inventiveness of their designs. During this so-called “Golden Age” of bookbinding, modern bookbinding techniques were perfected to a fine art, particularly in the United States. At this time, book covers were considered part of the decorative arts, connected with home furnishings and some architectural designs.

Architects, landscape painters, illustrators and graphic artists alike were drawn to book design and were often associated with well-known publishers such as Harper's, Scribner's, or Houghton Mifflin and designed numerous bindings for many well known writers. Many of these designers believed that a book's physical appearance should reflect its literary content and made an effort to relate decorations to the text. This is especially evident in books with a Christmas theme, which were purposely produced for the Christmas gift market.

Please enjoy ~ from Cassandra’s collection ~ a sampling below of these beautiful works of art…

Be of good cheer!

Cassandra

James Whitcomb Riley ~ The Hoosier Poet

He taught us how to understand the music of the birds,

The robin made a tune for us, but Riley wrote the words;

And at his joyous task he wrought with such a wondrous art

That we could feel the happiness that filled the robin's heart.

And when the Spring comes back to us, and once again we hear

The golden song at eventide that rings so true and clear,

And when the April shadows fall across the meadow lane,

The gentle minstrel of the Spring shall sing for him in vain.

He wandered through the village streets the afternoon along,

He heard the children's laughter - and made it into song.

He made it into living song, that down the years shall wing,

And yet in song of simple words that they themselves could sing.

And through all ages and all lands forever - near and far -

In every time and every clime where little children are -

Shall they still thrill at the story time beneath the magic spell

Of him who told them what they thought  - and understood so well.

~ To James  Whitcomb Riley by James J. Montague

Known as the “Hoosier poet of the people”, and also as the “Children’s Poet,” James Whitcomb Riley, was born in 1849 in Greenfield, Indiana on the “National Road” or U.S. Route 40.

Riley's poetry and prose reflect romance, childhood memories, small town life, family life, friendship, nature, patriotism, and humor. Riley’s chief legacy was his influence in fostering the creation of a midwestern cultural identity. Along with other writers of his era, he helped create a caricature of midwesterners and formed a literary community that rivaled the established eastern literati in popular works. Books of his poetry and prose were published in both the U.S. and in Great Britain.

Riley’s most famous works were written in the Hoosier dialect of the simple farm folk of Greenfield and vicinity. As the famous author and literary critic (and Riley friend), Hamlin Garland, aptly stated: “…from this town, and other similar towns, has Whitcomb Riley drawn the sweetest honey of poesy—homey with a native delicious tang, as of buck wheat and basswood bloom with hints of the mullein and the thistle of dry pastures.” Riley’s work is considered whimsical and direct, as if he were telling stories to children around the fireside.

Three of the most well-known of his hundreds of poems are “When the Frost is on the Punkin,” “The Old Swimmin’ Hole,” and “Little Orphant Annie,” first published in 1885 as “The Elf Child.” This poem inspired not only the Little Orphan Annie legacy but also the famous Raggedy Ann dolls. Interestingly, “The Elf Child” was supposed to be re-entitled as “Little Orphant Allie,” named for a little girl named Mary Alice “Allie” Smith, who was a “hired girl” in the Riley household when the poet was growing up in Greenfield. An error by a typesetter changed Allie to “Annie.”

"Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay

An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an brush the crumbs away,

An' shoe the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth an sweep,

An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an' keep..."

By the end of the eighteenth century and until his death in 1916, Riley was a well-known poet and speaker who toured throughout the U.S. and Europe. He was the first poet in America to receive the gold medal of poetry from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and he was an honored and regular guest at the White House. Every October the people of his hometown of Greenfield celebrate Riley with the Riley Festival, complete with a parade of all the local school children carrying and depositing fall bouquets at the foot of his statue on the courthouse lawn.

When the Frost Is on the Punkin

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bare-headed, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ hearty-like about the atmosphere,

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;

But the air’s so appetisin’; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

The husky, rusty rustle of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;

The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still

A-preachin’ sermons to us of the barns they growed to fill;

The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;

The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!—

O, it sets my heart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Cassandra's James Whitcomb Riley Collection:

Some decorative publisher's editions of James Whitcomb Riley's books: