Collection of Seven Margaret Armstrong Bindings: The Unknown Quantity; The Blue Flower; The Ruling Passion; Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land; Little Rivers; Days Off; Fisherman's Luck
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908-1922. Very Good +. Item #25093
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908-1912. Later printings. Octavos; dark blue cloth stamped in gilt, red, blue, white, and green, top edges gilt.
Armstrong was, along with Alice Cordelia Morse and Sarah W. Whitman, one of the most accomplished and successful book designers of the late 19th and early 20th century, and her Van Dyke series (12 designs in total) is among her most distinct. As her brother remarked:
"She started a vogue for making book covers themselves artistic and distinctive, and her covers became a sort of identity tag for the author. Whenever I see the dark blue and gold design on the spine of some book on a library shelf I have recognized it as a Henry van Dyck's [sic] even before Margaret's distinctive lettering tells me so." [Gullans and Espey p. 27]
Very light edgewear to extremities; a nick and scrape to spine of Out-Of-Doors, but otherwise remarkably well preserved, bindings are sound. Ownership inscriptions to preliminaries of most volumes; a couple stray pencil annotations, but otherwise pages unmarked. An attractive set spanning the latter portion of Armstrong's career in book design.
Price: $275.00