Q: I have found an old printing of “The House of the Seven Gables”. It does not indicate if it is a part of a series. It is small, pocket size. I have reviewed your page on the Altemus company trying to find the book. I can see it was printed many times. What puzzles me is the forward, by Henry Tuckerman, has Nathaniel Hawthorne — 1807 — There is no death date. This would lead me to believe it was published before his death (1864), but I see no such listing in your page. I also have “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table”. Any thoughts?

A: Both of these books rare part of the Vademecum Series and were published in 1903. They originally came within a labeled box. All of the titles in this publisher’s series are reprints.

The appliqués on the front cover are parts of different European paintings. Altemus would cut up these paintings into usable slices and put different ones randomly onto different books. This process is shown at: http://www.henryaltemus.com/vademecum.htm
An example is seen with the picture on your “Autocrat” book. Note the more complete picture which encompasses your book’s appliqué.

Here is the example with your “House of Seven Gables”.