Heads or Tails? Morse designs in the American Bookmaker

In earlier posts I mentioned what a wonderful primary resource the American Bookmaker is for information about American decorated book covers, book decorations, illustrations and other subjects of book history. Fortunately, now many issues of the magazine are online and easily search-able. Several years ago, I found these by spending Christmas Eve day in the rare book library at Columbia University looking through all of the issues from the late 1880s through the 1890s. It was transporting to look at the actual magazines; it felt like I could have been in the 1890s just getting up to date with the latest book info. Here are two Morse designs for you to enjoy from the American Bookmaker. 

Link to Head Piece design

Link to Tail Piece design, see page 36

Original Cover Design for The Bookmaker, by Alice C. Morse

January 1891, page 15.
Link to image and article

http://books.google.com/books?id=dILnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=alice+c.+morse+american+bookmaker+January+1891&source=bl&ots=YzQrp4WYGa&sig=SUIyAqaF1SPOwUw3svWwrecouqA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_EFjUY-vBeiZ0QH18oGQDQ&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=alice%20c.%20morse%20american%20bookmaker%20January%201891&f=false

A Venetian June

 Here is a lovely grotesque book cover design by Morse that is not in my book, but was discovered in time for the Grolier Club exhibition. As you can see, it is signed AM under the author's name, within the curly leaves of the lower part of the design.

Below is a review of the design in The Bookman, Volume 4. The review also attributes Morse as a designer for some of the volumes in Century's 'Thumbnail Series' and for the singular, classical design of Harper's 'Odd Number Series' and includes a picture of A Venetian June. While we now know that Morse designed at least two of the books for The Thumbnail series (Writing to Rosina and Tracings [see Tracings in an earlier posting), it still remains for me to locate the rest of the books in the series and see which can be attributed to Morse.

A review of A Venetian June from The Bookman, 1896

Anna Fuller
A Venetian June
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1896
Printer: The Knickerbocker Press
155 x 110 x 20 mm
Signed

R. L. Stevenson's, Island Nights Entertainments - A Possible Morse Design

Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Island Night's Entertainments. 

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893

Awhile back, Christina Kraus sent a picture of this unsigned book cover, thinking it might be by Alice C. Morse. It looks compatible with Morse's work but I haven't found any proof of its designer as yet. Morse did design the cover of Stevenson's  The Wrecker for  Scribner's, published in 1892. (See Dubansky entry 92-13.)

Christine of the Hills

Richard Minsky and John Lehner identified this cover as a Morse design and it certainly looks like one. It is signed in the lower right corner of the front cover illustration, but the monogram is not typical of Morse as it is missing the crossbar in the 'A'. This could just be artistic licence. The more pictorial covers we find of Morse's, the more we have a sense of her pictorial style -- and that list is growing. As Morse worked in so many styles (grotesque, art nouveau, arts and crafts, classical, etc.) it can be a challenge to identify her work if it is not signed -- and pretty much everything before 1894 is not signed. (Morse was designing book covers since 1887). I have not yet looked for a published reference that would verify that Morse designed Christine of the Hills. I plan to, but if you find anything, let me know.



Max Pemberton
Christine of the Hills
New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1897
University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Signed
181 x 127 x 27 mm
Photo Credit: Richard Minsky

A Singer of the Sea - A Variant of a Cover Used on Paul Dunbar's Lyrics of Love and Laughter

Those of you familiar with Alice C. Morse will recongnize this pretty design from its appearance on two other titles in The Proper Decoration of Book Covers:

 My Lady's Slipper by Dora Sigerson (Dubansky entry 99-4).
Lyrics of Love and Laughter by Paul Dunbar (Dubansky entry 03-1)

Thanks to Valinda Carroll for discovering it.

And the variants just keep on coming and characteristically deteriorate in quality. 

Amelia E. Barr

A Singer From the Sea

New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

copyright 1893; no date on book

160 x 107 x 27 mm

Signed

A Puritan's Wife - (Almost) Everything Makes Sense

The binding for A Purtian's Wife (I.A.N.A., 1901; Dubansky entry 01-1), never made sense to me. It looks like a later adaptation of Morse's design. The mystery is at least somewhat solved by the appearance of the book cover shown here, that has Morse's lettering and spine design. I still feel that there may be an earlier variant of this cover somewhere out there because something still irks me about this one. The color of the stamping in relation to the cloth doesn't work well and I don't think it would have been Morse's choice. The copyright date on this book is 1896. That's where I think another design will eventually surface. Just a guess. Both books, entry 01-1 and the one shown here have the same title page.

Max Pemberton
A Puritan's Wife
180 x 112 x 22 mm
Signed