Henry Altemus Company

Magic Wand Series

An advertising flyer for the Magic Wand Series (#129) has been discovered.

This 6 volume collection of books is very special. Tudor Jenks wrote the books and John R. Neill, the Oz illustrator, illustrated them. The Neill pictures have made these books very collectable and much more valuable than many other Altemus published fairy tale books. Of course, this is also true for the Neill illustrated books of the 6 volume Fairy Tale Series (#84) which was published in 1906.

The Magic Wand books are 6” x 4.5” and were published in only one format although some of the books have been seen with different cloth pictorial covers. Brown colored endpapers were noted (see below). The volumes were all priced at 50 cents.

From the Altemus catalogue: "These stories are bright, humorous, and especially clever in text and illustration. They are fresh examples of the author’s delicate flights of fancy."

Printemps Series

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Altemus - Altemus published the works of numerous authors whose works they were not authorized to publish. For the most part these were books not covered by the copyright act. The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter was probably the most well known of the Altemus unauthorized books. In fairness however, perhaps the most well known and popular books “pirated” were the 4 books of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. These were published as part of the Printemps Series.

The Printemps Series was a 25 book series published in its entirety in 1895 and only 1895. The cloth multicolored cover was the same for all this series’ books. It is presumed it was jacketed with a jacket that matched the cover but this has not been verified.

Confirming the scarcity of these books is the fact that the classic bibliography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Green and Gibson only mentions two of the four Doyle books published in the series (The Sign of the Four and Beyond the City). Omitted are A Case of Identity and Other Stories (shown here) and A Study in Scarlet.

These books are without illustrations and are 6.5” x 4.5”.

A Printemps Series advertisement as well as the cover of a Doyle book are seen below

Altemus Photographic Album & Ephemera

Altemus produced photographic albums from the early 1860s to at least the 1890s. (See Section 1 in the bibliography.)

Today a card which is shown below was discovered in the album pictured below. The pictured album is somewhat fancier than most other Altemus albums. Note the inlaid gold gilt designs on the fore-edges of the album. The bottom, top and interior page edges all have a gold gilt leaf design embossed on top of the gold gilt page edges. (See picture). The cover is sealskin with an ornate inlaid gold pattern. This was one of the more expensive examples of photographic albums that Altemus produced.