The Proper Decoration of Book Covers:
The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse
Mindell Dubansky; Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, contrib.; Josephine M. Dunn, contrib.
The Grolier Club
2008 • 108 pp. 119 color illus. 9 x 12"
$35.00 (plus $5 s&h) Paper, 978-0-910672-74-0
Exhibition Award Winner 2009, Honorable Mention:
The Exhibition Awards Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, winner of a 2009 Katharine Kyes Leab & Daniel J. Leab American Books Prices Current Exhibition Award:
The Grolier Club, for The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse, by Mindell Dubansky, with Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen and Josephine M. Dunn; designed by Jerry Kelly.
This catalog constitutes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature of its field, and documents an instance of book collecting, by Mindell Dubansky, as a form of research. There isn't an element of this book that isn't excellent of its kind and useful in its own right, including the provision of a general essay by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen that provides historical context and a fresh view. It is so excellent of its kind that the Exhibitions Award Committee felt that it deserved an honorable mention as something exquisite to place alongside the weighty and impressive winner from the Getty Research Institute. The audience obviously includes all of the many people who have taken Sue Allen's Rare Book School course, "Publisher’s Bookbindings, 1830-1910," and anyone else with more than passing interest in graphic design, women's work, publishing history, etc. The catalog is highly detailed; the apparatus of chronology, glossary, bibliography, and multiple indexes is everything one hopes for in work of this kind; and the design and production values are as one expects from those involved.
Non-Paypal buying option:
Send a personal check for $40.00 (includes shipping) to:
Mindell Dubansky
210 East 88th St.
#4-D
New York, NY 10128
A Broadside for Sale:Copies of this letterpress broadside are also available for sale for $20 + $5 shipping and handling. The image is an interpretation of Morse's "Summer Holiday" drawn by Peter Schell and printed by Roni Gross. The text is an interview with Morse in Gilson WIllets, "The Designing of Book-Covers: Women Artists in the Field," Art Interchange (November, 1894). The book cover has a yellow background with the design in brown and green. The type and Morse's printed signature are in black; cream colored paper. A better photograph to come.
Duplicates from my Collection for Sale include:
Amelia Barr. A Singer from the Sea.
Washinton Irving. The Alhambra (2 vols.).
Paul Leicester Ford. Tattle Tales of Cupid.
Mrs. Oliphant. A House in Bloomsbury.
Charles Parkhurst. Talks to Young Men.
Charles Parkhurst. Talks to Young Women.
Max Pemberton. A Puritan's Wife.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Gypsy's Cousin Joy.
Please contact me at mindelldubansky@gmail.com
