Q: Good afternoon,

Attached please find two photos of my book “Through the Looking Glass” published by Altemus. As you see, the cover has gilden writing and floral design. I am not sure of the year of publication; if it is a first edition; and its value. Could you assist?

Thank you

A: This book belongs to a series of reprints called The Boys and Girls Classics. You can see more about your book here: http://henryaltemus.com/series/series58.htm

The books that have the gold gilt flowers were published between 1899 and 1902.

Most books in this series have only nominal value. The Lewis Carroll books are more widely collected and therefore of a higher worth.

Value is variable-generally $0-40.

This combination book was published in two formats beginning in 1915. The brown dust jacketed book was published first while the white coated dust jacket was published after 1915. All of the non series Alice books published by Altemus are quite uncommon – especially with the dust jacket.

Dust Jacket- later

Dust Jacket- earlier

A few examples have been discovered of books which Altemus printed for another entity. Altemus did a set of Shakespeare’s books for the Gusky Department Store. (http://henryaltemus.com/publications/gusky.htm). A Bible has been seen which was done for Montgomery Ward & Co. (http://henryaltemus.com/publications/montward.htm).

Here is another example.

In Series 85- Famous Red and White Books (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series85.htm) Uncle Tom’s Cabin was book #10. It was published in 1894. A book with the identical cover and contents has been discovered that has Montgomery Ward & Co. as the imprint as opposed to Henry Altemus. The Montgomery Ward book says “Souvenir Edition” at the top of the title page and has Montgomery Ward & Co., with the 111-116 Michigan Avenue, Chicago address at the base of the title page.

The copyright page for both books is identical: Henry Altemus, 1894.

This book undoubtedly was published by Altemus for Montgomery Ward. I suspect it was a promotional item since it does have “Souvenir Edition” printed on the top of the title page. Most likely it was published in the mid-1890′s.

The Golden Days Series – Series #97 (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series97.htm) consists of 11 books published in 1906 and reprinted thereafter for several years.

Here are two new pictures of book covers from this series (An Easter Lily). The earlier dust jacket has no colors whereas the later book has red and yellow on the jacket. See below.
Also the earlier book cover has colored drapes whereas the later book’s drapes have only muted drape colors. See below.

Later		Earlier

Q: Hello! We are hoping to verify authenticity of this book (Carmen), and perhaps it’s value. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

A: Your book is part of the Vademecum Series and was published in 1901. See: http://henryaltemus.com/vademecum.htm

The picture on the cover was painted by Alphonse Mucha as part of his four painting Seasons Series. It is entitled Summer.

This book usually sells in the range of $0-25.

Although Format 2 of the Young People’s Library only was published between 1898 and 1902, all of the titles had more than one cover variant.
Here is a new cover for the database for book #52- The Sleepy King. This Sleepy King is identical to the red covered book already in the database. Even the ads are the same. Both books have ad style “d” (see: http://henryaltemus.com/series/series202F2.htm) which indicates a 1901 publication.

Both books are shown below.

The Beauxarts Series is a publisher’s series of various reprinted works of fiction, essays, poetry and classics that was published between 1897 and 1902. The books of the series had two different numbering sequences. The first sequence is in Series #47 (http://henryaltemus.com/series/series47.htm) and included the books published in 1897 and 1898. Each of these year’s books have distinctive covers.

The later Beauxarts Series (Series #48) which was published between 1899 and 1902 had two different formats. The book being added to the database today is the fifth cover variant of the 1899-1901 volumes. This book is the first of this cover format that I have seen with silver lettering. I am including the other 1899-1901 covers here for interest.

New Variant Cover

The Vademecum Series was the longest running publisher’s series that Altemus published. It ran from 1894 to 1926. The books were all reprints and ranged from essays and poetry to fiction and classics of literature.

Every year or so the cover changed. In fact, some years there were more than one cover design. Here is a new cover formats for the 1895 books. It is unclear presently how many possible covers of this format there are but this light green one is the sixth I have included in the database. For comparison the others are also displayed below.

New Cover

This is one of Altemus’ publisher’s series. The Series consists of numerous reprints of classics, poetry, fiction, essays, etc. Every year or so between 1896 and 1910 the cover design changed. In 1903-1904 the cover design consisted of a pedestal on the left and a flower on the right of the cover in three of the four formats. (There is a suede cover with the pedestal but without the flower).

The three flower covers are distinguished by the pedestal side color which has been seen in blue, pink and white. Each cover has one of sixteen possible flowers on the right. Thus there are sixteen different possible blue covers, sixteen pink and sixteen white.

The picture below is a new cover for the data base. With this cover there are eight of the sixteen blue pedestal covers displayed at http://henryaltemus.com/series/series143.htm.

There are nine white covers and seven pink covers also shown.

Series #202- Young People’s Library (http://henryaltemus.com/ypl/index.htm)

The books of the Young People’s Library were among the most popular of all the Altemus books. A number of titles were published in all four formats. Generally these books went through a number of changes as the years went by. Today I am adding a new Format 3 dust jacket picture to the data base for A Child’s Story of the Bible. ( See: http://henryaltemus.com/series/series202F3.htm)

Interestingly, this title went through numerous changes, both subtle and obvious during its publication in the four formats of the Young People’s Library. I thought it might be of interest to review the evolution of the Altemus printings of this book.

This title was first published in 1895 as a Format 1-Young People’s Library book. Although the number of pages differs between the various formats, the content was unchanged. The page differential was caused by page and font size differences.

Different formats have different illustrations. The Format 1 and Format 2 book have the most illustrations (72) but they are mainly black and white line drawn. Format 2 has a colored frontispiece on glossy paper which the Format 1 book does not have.

The Format 3 books until the late teens have 4 color illustrations in addition to 72 black and white line drawn pictures. The black and white pictures are more simplistic than those of the earlier formats. (See below for an example.) The later Format 3 and the Format 4 books have fewer black and white illustrations and only one color picture (frontispiece).

Format 1	Format 2-Earlier	Format 2-Later
Format 3-Earliest Dust Jacket	Format 3-Dust Jacket-later	Format 3-Latest (White coated)

Note the differences between these two books are the color of the cover and the coloration of parts of the man’s torso.

Format 3-earlier cover

Format 3-later cover

Format 4-Dust jacket

Note these black and white line drawn illustrations. The one to the left is the one found in the earlier books whereas the one on the right is found in the later books.
It is clear that the earlier illustration is a much higher quality picture.