Many of the books that make up the Cherrycroft Series #61 (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series61.htm) were previously part of Series #56-The Boys and Girls Booklovers Series (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series56.htm). Without the jacket it can be hard but not impossible to distinguish them.

The Cherrycroft books are slightly smaller. 6.75 x 4.5 versus 7 x 4.75. So measure carefully.

With a dust jacket several points can help. The later dust jackets have color whereas the earlier do not. The Boys and Girls Booklovers books do not have color on their jackets.
The back of the jacket of the Cherrycroft books frequently have the Little Men and Women Series (#125). This series was published starting in 1907 but by looking at the ads and seeing which books were part of the series, dating your book and assigning it to a series should be easy.

Below are pictures of the Cherrycroft and Boys and Girls Booklovers’ editions of Sonny Boy. Note the added decoration on the latter series’ book. Note also the color on the dust jacket of the Cherrycroft book.

Altemus published almost all of its books in Series form. I have compiled so far a list of 150 books which were done outside of a series. See: http://henryaltemus.com/nonseries.html .

Many of the titles were printed in both series and non series formats. As time goes on it is becoming quite difficult to obtain the remaining few non series books not already in the database.

Today non series book #104 came in the mail. It is The Nine Swords of Morales written by George Homer Meyer. The book was published in 1905 and has no illustrations. It undoubtedly came with a dust jacket which I as of yet do not have.

Although I know that every Altemus book originally had a dust jacket or came in a box, knowing and seeing are two different things.
Today in the mail I received this great example of a 1901 dust jacket from this series. The design matches the cover of the book except without colors-as was expected. These early publisher’s series books are quite scarce in dust jacket.

The title from the series are listed on the back flap and back cover. A very rare jacket.
Credit to Icapsa Used Books which is where I purchased it.

For more information, see http://henryaltemus.com/series/series115.htm

Here are two new pictures for this series. The 1899 books of the Petit Trianon Series were half vellum with an embossed floral decoration on the left and a floral/decorative pattern on the right. It is unclear how many different right sided patterns there are but up to this time I have found 24. They can be seen at http://henryaltemus.com/series/series143.htm .

The other picture here has a vine-like pattern on the left vellum side. It is an 1899-1900 book. As with the 1899 books, the right side has various decorative/floral arrangements. Including this book I have discovered 24 different designs.

Q: I was emailing in regards to a book in which we have and it is printed by Henry Altemus Company Philadelphia and it is by Henry Drummond and it is called the Natural Law in the Spiritual World.

If you could please email some information I would appreciate it as there is no publication date on it.

A: This book is part of the Devotional Series (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series75.htm). This series of religious titles was published between 1895 and 1933. The book pictured here is part of Format 5 and was printed between 1898 and 1924. It originally came in a labeled box.

Its date can be determined by studying the ads in the back and figuring out when the books/series were published. This is relatively easy to do. Also if the title page says Henry Altemus Company the book was published in 1900 or later. If it says Henry Altemus it was published prior to 1900.

As noted in the last blog entry, many of the Mother Stories books of the same title have frontispieces that change over time. Here are two examples which I am unable to chronologically order.

In looking however at the frontispieces from the last entry and this one there may be some style similarities between some of these pictures may help to date them.

I hope to determine whether this is or is not the case in the next few weeks. For those who care about this minutia- stay tuned.

All of the formats of the Mother Stories’ series books (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series132.htm) have the same text but there are some other fairly significant differences. The reverse of the dust jackets went through an evolution during the years of publication. The earliest dust jackets listed only the first 6 books. Later the jackets listed 10 books at 50 cents, then at $1.00 and finally without any price.

Another recently noted difference is that the colored frontispieces changed as the years went on. There is no way to chronologically date these pictures except to say they are different as time went by.

Here are three examples from Mother Stories.

Q: I have a book that was given to me that I am curious about. It is called The Children’s Shakespeare written by E. Nesbit published by Philadelphia Henry Altemus Company Copyright 1900. I found it in your archives under the Dainty Series. It is almost exactly the same with the exception that it does not have the Henry Altemus.com the bottom of it. Can you tell me a bit about it? Here is the picture. Is it rare? A first edition?

A: Your book is part of the 5th format of the Dainty Series. http://henryaltemus.com/series/series74.htm.
Thus it is not an Altemus first edition.

It is not especially rare and has very little collector interest especially without a dust jacket.

Q: Would you mind taking a look at this book for me? I have had a hard time finding one exactly like it.
MARMION: A TALE OF A FLODDEN FIELD

A: Your book can be found in the Petit Trianon Series here http://henryaltemus.com/series/series143.htm in the 1901-1902 published books.

The cover illustration was done by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). He was a well know Czech artist who excelled in the art nouveau area. He illustrated magazine covers, book covers, posters etc.

He illustrated two of the the Petit Trianon 1901-1902 covers. This one is called Poetry. Altemus modified the picture a bit as can be seen with the side by side comparison. If you look carefully, it appears that on the Altemus cover the woman has her elbows on a book.

In 1901 the Vademecum Series (#180) has 4 Mucha covers.

Here is another Non Series Black Beauty book. It was published in the Mid to late teens. This book has been seen with blue cloth. The end papers are decorated with line drawn pictures of riders on horses chasing a fox.