Women's History Month
“Do you think Betty is a Chrysanthemum?” Sarah Wyman Whitman & Sarah Orne Jewett
In the late 19th century, the popularization of decorative publishers' bindings created a unique opportunity for women in the traditionally male-dominated field of book publishing. After the developments in printing technology made possible by the Industrial Revolution and before the widespread use of dust jackets, publishers used decorative book covers as a means of advertisement, both to communicate the subject matter of individual works and to attract potential buyers when displayed in a store window. Many of the artists they hired to design these covers were women, and today, their work is collected and studied much like fine bindings—not just for the contents of their pages, but as art objects in and of themselves.
The first woman artist to be regularly employed by Houghton Mifflin‚ and one of the most prolific designers of her day—was Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman. She was trained as a professional artist by William Morris Hunt, William Rimmer, and Thomas Couture, and, being heavily influenced by the Arts and Crafts stipulation that art and life should be intertwined, she extended her craft to include stained glass, interior design, and other decorative arts. Her distinct book cover designs reflect this; they are recognizable for their often simple color palettes, Art Nouveau motifs, long-stemmed flowers, and Whitman’s signature “high-waisted” text. Some of Whitman’s best designs were for the works of her close friend and fellow Bostonian Sarah Orne Jewett, and, over a century later, these bindings (many of which bear Whitman’s monogram of her initials in a flaming heart) stand out among the rest.
The King of Folly Island (1888), The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), The Queen’s Twin (1899)
But like the women who created them, these books are more than just beautiful things to be admired—we can, in fact, learn quite a bit from them. Perhaps the most important is that Whitman and Jewett were active collaborators, not just two women who were paired by their publisher. Jewett would implore Houghton Mifflin to send Whitman advanced proofs of a given text to inform the binding designs. In turn, the artist would help Jewett to conceptualize her characters: in November 1889, Whitman wrote to Jewett about her design for Betty Leicester:
“Dear fellow traveller—do you think Betty is a Chrysanthemum kind of a flower? In my brief but very clear glimpse of her in a few pages which were vouchsafed to me, I get this idea of her—I have so stated on the cover—”
Jewett apparently agreed; the binding for Betty Liecester does not appear to have been changed after Whitman’s initial proposal. Indeed, when Houghton attempted to change the design for a new edition in 1904, Jewett asked them to restore Whitman’s original design.
A White Heron (1866), Betty Leicester: A Story for Girls (1890), Betty Leicester’s Christmas (1899)
These books also evidence the network of professional women supporting each other’s work that helped make these types of collaborations possible. Both Whitman and Jewett were among the circle of prominent women artists and writers who met at Annie Fields’ literary salons at 148 Charles Street in Boston (other members included Willa Cather and Celia Thaxter). These women were important in each other’s lives; in private, they encouraged each other's professional crafts when society at large did not (this was decades before women were awarded the right to vote), and in public, they vocally advocated for one another’s professional advancement (Jewett commissioned Whitman to design over one hundred windows for her alma mater the Berwick Academy in Maine). Both Whitman and Jewett paved their own paths, but it is hard to imagine either achieving quite the same level of success without the other supporting her.
The books shown here are part of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, but publishers' bindings can be found in collections across The New York Public Library. Please see Meredith Mann's Designing Women: The Art of Cloth Bindings to see some examples from the Rare Book Division and for suggestions on how to search for cloth bindings at NYPL.
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