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.

Going out

We have a few beautiful bindings that came in over the last few weeks.  After cataloging they're making their way to their future home in Special Collections. We can identify binding designers for some of them, and some, as usual, are still a mystery.

 This copy of A Rose of a Hundred Leaves by Amelia E. Barr was published by Dodd, Mead and Company sometime in the early 1900s. We know it wasn't after 1905 because it's inscribed "Xmas 1905" and it was copyrighted in 1891. We know that Alice Cordelia Morse created  this particular binding thanks to Mindell Dubansky's book, The Proper Decoration of Book Covers. There is another version of this binding for this title, also by Alice Morse, that keeps the same concept but has a more elaborate spine and lacks the author's name at the foot of the front cover. It's also a different shade of green and the title decoration seems to be a little bit smaller, although the book itself is bigger so the decoration might be the same size. This edition was deemed the "pocket" edition according to Dubansky.

Marse Chan by Thomas Nelson Page was also designed by Alice Cordelia Morse. Once again, we know this thanks to the work of Mindell Dubansky. As you can see just from these two examples, Alice Morse was a very talented binding designer. The styles on these two bindings are very different, even down to the lettering. This book will be in the Charles M. Adams American Trade Bindings Collection.

Nathalie's Sister by Anna Chapin Ray will go to the Girls Books in Series Collection. It was published by Little, Brown, and Company of Boston in 1909. It's part of The Teddy Books series which, as you can see, appears on the cover. Even though this binding is not signed, it has been attributed to Amy Sacker by our own Mark Schumacher (see his Amy Sacker website ). This title was first published by Little, Brown in 1904 and which has the same cover design but with Amy Sacker's monogram in the lower left corner of the top panel. As we have said in earlier posts, as books go through successive printings, the publisher often would start stripping off the fancier, more attractive parts of the bindings so they could produce them more cheaply (they even stripped away designers' monograms!). The first printing not only had Amy Sacker's monogram but the lettering and ruled borders of the panels were in gilt rather than in ink (as on this copy).
                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                           

We don't know who designed the rest of the bindings, but the research is always ongoing.

Persis Putnam's treasure by Myra Sawyer Hamlin; illustrated by R.C. Hallowell. Nan series.  Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1908.. 

Sometimes we transfer books from the Library's general stacks into Special Collections. The People of our Neighborhood by Mary E. Wilkins seems to have been first published serially by the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia.  It was issued in book form in 1898 as part of the Ladies' Home Journal Library of Fiction, jointly published by Curtis and Doubleday & McClure of New York. It has a completely different cover (we hold this edition in our Woman's Collection). The copy pictured has the imprint: New York: Melville Publishing Company, 1903. It also includes The Jamesons, by the same author, bound in at the end of the volume, with the imprint: New York: International Association of Newspapers & Authors, 1901. Even though the title page for this copy of the book has the "Melville Publishing Company" as the imprint, it retains the International Association of Newspapers & Authors binding design (note the "I.A.N.A." at the foot of the spine). This will be part of the Woman's Collection

Mabel's mishap by Amy E. Blanchard. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1900. Illustrations by Ida Waugh. Part of the Lad and Lassie series in the Girls Books in Series Collection.

Dorothy Brooke at Ridgemore by Frances Campbell Sparhawk.  New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1912. Part of the Dorothy Brooke books series, this title will be added to the Girls Books in Series Collection. 
It is in its dust jacket (not pictured).

*All books, unless otherwise noted, were donated by Mark Schumacher in memory of his mother, Dorothy Schumacher.

**Note on series: UNCG has created our own series for some of these books. Just because we have a series listed, does not mean that that book necessarily has a series statement present or was issued in a publisher's series. 

Publisher's series bindings

These beauties are getting cataloged today! As you can see from the image, they have the same binding designs just with different colors and different images in the frames. I love when bindings like these come across my desk for a couple of reasons. (1) Creating the binding description is less time consuming because you just have to switch out a few details, and (2) I just like to see how many times a series binding can be used on different books. We have several of this particular series binding in CONTENTdm but we like to scan variant bindings of the titles to see the different ways they were issued at the time.

Here are other titles that have the same binding design* as the ones I am cataloging:

Famous beauties in art

Beautiful women in art

Famous authors (women)

Music in art

Famous beauties in art

Famous actors of the day

Famous stars of light opera

The prisoner of mademoiselle

The prisoner of mademoiselle

The lovers' treasury of verse

Amy Sacker designed this particular binding for L.C. Page & Company. The oldest version UNCG holds dates back to 1899 (Famous actors of the day) and continues at least through 1910 (The lovers' treasury of verse). Her innovative styles were relevant for years which is an accomplishment not many designers can claim. To learn more about Amy Sacker you can read all about her on Mark Schumacher's site.

What was most surprising to me about this particular series was how little it changed over that time. Sometimes when publishers reused bindings they would slowly start stripping away the frills in order to produce them more cheaply. This is especially true for the same title being reprinted over the years. The first printing would be beautiful, with illustrations and gilt and anything else you can think of. The next printing might replace the gilt with black, still nice, but a little bit cheaper. Then the next installment would take away an illustration or piece of garland (or a binding signature) and so on and so on until there was just the title left on the book. In this case, the cover of the binding stayed the same except for color variations and paper onlays that were switched out to match the subject of the binding. The Prisoner of Mademoiselle, which was published in 1904 (right in the middle of the years during which the cover design was used) had the most differences. The paper onlay didn't use an illustration or photograph; instead it had a woman's silhouette.  The spine had an additional ornamental design and lettering that were not on earlier or later versions of the binding design. This particular version of the binding was also used on the Grosset & Dunlap printing of The Prisoner of Mademoiselle, except that the silhouette was stamped on the cloth rather than an onlay. It wasn't uncommon for publishers to sell the rights for books or make accommodations (in the publisher's favor of course) with other companies which included the illustrations and book designs.

The bindings weren't the only thing that carried over from book to book, the endpapers and title page designs were also reused in some instances. Most of the books (with the exception of a few such as The Prisoner of Mademoiselle) had the series endpapers that can be seen on the left.  The three prominent visuals in red are two opened books towards the bottom and the Page printer's mark with the Latin motto "spe labor levis" which can be translated as "May the work be light" or "Hope lightens labor" or "The hope of light labor."  The visuals in red are surrounded by a green garland and floral designs with a crown at the foot of the page.

The title page (seen on the right) takes elements from the endpapers and uses them in a decorative border. What I find most fascinating about this is that while the endpapers lack a signature identifying who created the design, the initials H.B.A. can be seen in the lower right hand corner of the title page border. Who H.B.A. is I can't say. My first thought was Helen Armstrong, Margaret Armstrong's sister, but her full name was Helen Maitland Armstrong so that ruled her out immediately. Looking at L.C. Page & Company's records might provide insight as to who H.B.A. could be but I'm not sure who holds their correspondence/archives, so that will have to be left for another day when there is time to do more research on H.B.A.








Why do publishers, in this case L.C. Page & Company, reuse binding designs and illustrations on several books? The number one answer that I can come up with is that it's the most cost-effective way to produce books, so a business strategy. If you already have the plates to print the books and a beautiful cover that you commissioned, you might as well get your money's worth out of them. It's similar to what we do with recycling the metadata. We create it in our cataloging records but then it is recycled and reused in CONTENTdm. It makes life easier and doesn't take up as much time which in turns saves money.

These particular bindings weren't the only series bindings for which Amy Sacker was responsible, or that Page would put out, but that is a subject for another post at another time.

*Binding images taken from UNCG's CONTENTdm American Publishers Trade Bindings Collection

Coming soon...

These beauties have made there way to my desk to be cataloged! Stay tuned for some exciting posts on some of the most influential binding designers. In this batch, there are bindings by Amy Richards, Amy Sacker, Sarah Whitman, Marion L. Peabody, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Margaret Armstrong, Blanche McManus Mansfield, and some that are unsigned.