Marion Louise Peabody

I always get excited when I discover something new--well, new to me anyway. I was looking around for information on Marion L. Peabody a few months back. We have several books designed by her in our collection, which you can view here. She was a very talented artist who knew how to provoke a response from her art work. I think my personal favorite of her designs appeared on The up grade by Wilder Goodwin (Toronto: Musson Book Company, 1910). The art nouveau cover design was used on the original 1910 Little, Brown and Company edition also.

I was looking for information on Marion Peabody because I was trying to complete her authority record while cataloging a book that had one of her designs. An authority record is set up by library catalogers to establish a standardized form of name that is used for all works by an author or other creator (in this case an artist). We do this so someone searching for a particular person does not have to search all the possible names that she might have used, but can find all her works under the standardized form.(1) The authorized form of her name currently is Peabody, Marion L., 1869-. I was looking around for her death date to add to this authorized form of her name. One of my go to places to find out dates for people is FamilySearch.org. I cannot recommend this site enough. It's free, easy to use, and mostly correct. I would still verify some of the information because part of this information is entered by people like you and me off the street, but when you have scanned documents (like in the case I'm about to discuss), it's hard to dispute the accuracy. 

When I was looking for her death date, I came across her passport application from 1921. You can imagine my excitement if you know anything about passport applications from the 1920s! This document is detailed AND it has a photograph of the artist herself. Nothing makes binding designers more real to me than when I see a photograph of them, or a handwritten letter or something along those lines. 

Looking at her passport application(2) I can verify that she was born in Boston, Massachusetts on April 19, 1869. Her father (who was not living at the time of the passport application) was named Charles K. Peabody and was born in Peabody, Massachusetts. Marion had been living in Italy from April 1912 until October 1920. By the time the passport application was filled out in 1921 she was living at 192 Brattle Street (which is still standing) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She last got a passport from the U.S. Embassy in Rome on July 31, 1920 which was surrendered and cancelled. She was attempting to return to Italy for "family business" and to "study," and she wanted to set sail on a ship named the Critic on May 12, 1921.

I love how descriptive (or non-descriptive) these passport applications were. In addition to a photograph you were supposed to have a written description. Marion Peabody was listed as:

Age: 52 years

Stature: 5 feet 5.5 inches

Forehead: high

Eyes: Brown

Nose: Straight

Mouth: Medium

Chin: Prominent

Hair: Reddish-brown

Complexion: Fair

Face: Oval

Distinguishing marks: none listed. 

This is the photograph that appeared in the application (thanks to the FamilySearch site for making all this information available):

This is not how I imagined that Marion Peabody looked, but then again I'm not quite sure what I had envisioned. I can almost picture her leaning over a table creating the above binding design.

Once you start researching, you never know what you will dig up. Again, I say, thank goodness for technology and digitization efforts. Without people taking the time to make this information available online, I would have never been able to find this image or know about her living in Italy for so long without a lot of research in print resources.

I still haven't found her death date, but I haven't given up. It will take a little more digging and possibly some time for someone to digitize something that will point me to this date. In the meantime, I'll be content with finding cool clues along the way about Marion L. Peabody and the person she was. 

1. If you're interested in this subject, the Library of Congress has prepared a booklet describing the data format catalogers use and the kinds of records we create. You can find it at: http://www.loc.gov/marc/uma/pt1-7.html

2. "United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV5B-984T : accessed 18 November 2015), Marion L Peabody, 1921; citing Passport Application, Massachusetts, United States, source certificate #17243, Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925, 1561, NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,666,802.