Between the Covers

Hardcover. Folio scrapbook. 166pp. Contemporary dark red half morocco, marbled papercovered boards. Front board is detached, spine a little loose and a few detached leaves, else very good. A neatly assembled scrapbook collection of newspaper articles, poems, songs, and miscellaneous extracts on various topics relating to fashion, morals, and current events, spanning the years 1822-1830. All neatly tipped-in on the versos and rectos of 83 unnumbered leaves in three columns; with a variety of custom cut and painted divisional borders, and numerous hand-colored wood and steel engraved vignettes of various sizes tipped-in between the clippings. The album also contains embossed color and gilt vignettes, half-page and full-page portrait and landscape wood and steel engravings, and one early American satirical lithograph by W.I. Stone. Most of the clippings are from local newspapers published in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Two large wood-engravings (of the Berkshire Medical Institution in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on the front pastedown, and the Town of Sherburne, Nantucket on the rear pastedown) indicate the album's geographical focus in Massachusetts. Most clippings reflect the morality, humor, and wit of an educated New England lady with decidedly liberal leanings and a special interest in Lord Byron and steamboats. The tipped-in vignettes and engravings are especially fine and varied in subject manner, the cutting and hand-coloring is accomplished, and the entire album was clearly made with considerable care, thus preserving a graphically vivid picture of the period.

Item #368634