American Arts and Crafts Designers

Historians have cited a change in bookcover design around 1890 or even later after Aubrey Beardsley’s Studio cover of April 1893 was made available to American hands.  However, the work of Sarah Wyman Whitman, thought by some to be the mother of professional American bookcover design, actually dates to the 1880s in Boston.  Like William Morris, Whitman rejected florid, overdecorated covers, favoring instead the use of a few colors (often green or yellow) decorated simply with stylized lettering and organic motifs.  No attempt to fill the bookcover with an overall pattern of silver or gold is made.  (See for  contrast the silvery cover of From Palm to Glacier; with an Interlude: Brazil, Bermuda, and Alaska, 1892, by an unknown artist.)  Following in her footsteps come many women who embrace book design as their profession, as well as important men better known as illustrators, like Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), whose Gibson Girls are perhaps more recognizable.  Like Whitman, many artists began to add their monograms to the covers of books, clearly identifying the design as their own.

Blanche Willis Howard.  Seven on the Highway.  Boston; New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1897.

Cover Design by: Sarah Wyman Whitman

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund.

Sarah Orne Jewett.  A Native of Winby and Other Tales. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1893.

Cover Design by: Sarah Wyman Whitman

Sarah Orne Jewett.  The Queen’s Twin and Other Stories.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899.

Cover Design by: Sarah Whitman

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892.

Illustrated by: F.O.C. Darley (1822 – 1888)

Cover Design by: Sarah Wyman Whitman

Gift of: Edith Lichstein

Frontispiece by F. O. C. Darley (of Claymont, DE)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892.

Illustrated by: F.O.C. Darley (1822-1888)

Cover Design by: Sarah Wyman Whitman

Gift of: Edith Lichstein

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892.

Illustrated by: F.O.C. Darley (1822 – 1888)

Cover Design by: Sarah Wyman Whitman

Gift of: Edith Lichstein

Sarah Orne Jewett.  Strangers and Wayfarers. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890.

Cover Design by: Sarah Wyman Whitman

Richard Harding Davis. The King’s Jackal. New York: Scribners, 1898.

Illustrated by: Charles Dana Gibson (1867 – 1944)

Cover Design by: Charles Dana Gibson

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

Frontispiece

Richard Harding Davis. The King’s Jackal. New York: Scribners, 1898.

Illustrated by: Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944)

Cover Design by: Charles Dana Gibson

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

Josephine Rand. The Spirit-Guest. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1897.

Cover Design by: Olive Lothrop Grover

Alice Wellington Rollins.  From Palm to Glacier; with an Interlude: Brazil, Bermuda, and Alaska.  New York;

London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892.

Cover Design by: Unknown.

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

Edwin M. Bacon. Historic Pilgrimages in New England. Boston: Silver, Burdett & Company, 1898.

Cover Design by: Amy Sacker (1872/73 – 1965)

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund