About this Item
Great Rivers of the World. As Seen and Described By Famous Writers. Collected and Edited by Esther Singleton. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, November, 1908. First Edition, 358 p. Fine signed binding by Alice Cordelia Morse measures 8.25 x 5.5", 8vo.
In fair condition. Boards normally scuffed at edges and worn/bumped at corners. Head and tail of spine bumped; gilt deco and lettering on spine lightly dulled, but legible and attractive. Top edge of text-block gilt. Ownership permanent ink stamp found on front end-page: "Dwight Marfield Dayton, Ohio". Front and rear gutters cracked with exposed binding mesh. Light toning in margins. Binding slightly shaken, but intact. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing.
Alice Cordelia Morse (1863 ? 1961) was an American designer of book covers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her work was inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and she is often placed as one of the top three book designers of her day. While still in graduate school, Morse began designing book covers.
In the period from 1887 to 1905, Morse designed approximately eighty-one book covers,? many of which were for major New York publishers such as Houghton Mifflin, Charles Scribner's Sons, Harper & Brothers, G.P. Putnam's Sons, and Dodd, Mead & Company. She designed covers for various types of books, including novels, plays, poetry, art history, travel literature, children's stories, and domestic handbooks and instructional manuals. Some of these were for famous authors, including Amelia Barr, Lafcadio Hearn, William Dean Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, and Oscar Wilde. She was often asked to design special holiday editions as well as posters.? She also received commissions for in-text illustrations and for adding decorative borders, vignettes, and title pages to publications. Along with designing book covers, Morse tried recreating 16th century book bindings.
True to the Arts and Crafts aesthetic, Morse's cover designs feature highly stylized patterns of organic forms like leaves and flowers. Her early work was inspired by Roman and Renaissance art, and she later experimented with designs drawn from Celtic, Arabic, Gothic, and Rococo art, and especially Art Nouveau.
Morse held that book designer must be able to take the central idea of the book and depict it creatively on its cover.? She also held that women were the best designers because their "intuitive sense of decoration, their feeling for beauty of line and harmony of color insures a high degree of success".
In her own day, the high quality of her work was often referred to in book reviews and other articles, and her success in working for top publishers testifies to the regard in which her work was held. She is today considered one of the top three book designers of the era, along with Margaret Neilson Armstrong and Sarah W. Whitman, and some place her as the best in this group.
COLI1908ABCX - 05/26 - HK3543.
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