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

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

Original gouache drawing found for "The Conquest of Granada"

About a year and a half ago, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum began an inventory of its prints and drawings and discovered a collection of Morse’s original designs for stained glass, book covers, and other related subjects. Among the 35 designs for book covers, only one has so far been identified as belonging to a published book.

Buy a copy of The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse
http://alicemorse.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html

Washington Irving

Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada:Agapida Edition; Author’s Revised Edition (in two volumes)

New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons

226 x 165 x 38 mm

Printer: The Knickerbocker Press, 1893

Dubansky Entry 93-2, p. 66

This is a half, preparatory drawing of Conquest of Granada. Cooper-Hewitt Accession Number: 1943-33-1-19; size: 20.4 x 7 x 1cm.:

The motifs used in this design also appear in Morse’s designs for stained glass…