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Recent Acquisition

Printed Cloth Binding

Elliott, Ebenezer. The poems of Ebenezer Elliott. New York: Leavitt & Co., 1850.

In December 2006 AAS member John Grossman gave AAS a remarkable American publisher's cloth binding: an elaborate design printed in five colors on white cloth covering an 1849 New York imprint. We were unaware of any comparable binding in the AAS collection. As luck would have it, three months later AAS was offered not one, but two similar examples in excellent condition! Both are volumes in the short-lived Leavitt's Cabinet Series issued in 1850 by New York publisher Leavitt & Co. The designs are identical, save for the author and title printed on the spine. In other words, Leavitt briefly employed this as a series binding. Interestingly, AAS has since acquired other volumes in this series, but in less elaborate publisher's bindings, suggesting that the printed cloth versions proved either unpopular or too expensive.
Purchased from Garrett Scott. Given by John Herron, in memory of Frances M. Herron.

- David Whitesell, Curator of Books

Recent Acquisitions Index

"One day I am visited by a collector of ordination sermons; the next, by a collector of 4th of July orations; then comes a collector of geography; another wants religious newspapers; another wants every book printed in New York before 1700. I accommodate myself to all; for I want every thing and collect every thing, and I have more zeal than the whole of them: and in this way I am kept very busy."
~Christopher Columbus Baldwin
 3rd Librarian of AAS