W. L. Allison and Company 19th Century Dust Jacket

I believe that most all books after 1880 were originally published with dust jackets and/or in boxes. The fact that the examples are hard to locate does not negate the premise.

Here is a dust jacketed book published by the W. L. Allison Company.

William L Allison (1832-1893) opened his publishing door in 1869 as the successor to T. O'Kane. Initially he used the W.L. Allison imprint. In 1890 the Allison plates were purchased by the Lovell's who organized the United States Book Company. Lovell's organization went broke soon after but by 1894 the Allison Company was up and running as the William L. Allison Company. It is unclear to me who was running the company since W.L. Allison was dead and buried. Nonetheless it continued to publish books until 1900.

In 1900 W.L. Allison sold all of their plates to the Donohue Brothers which continued most of the Allison series.

This book was published sometime between 1898 (when Adventures in Cuba was printed and 1900 when Allison met its demise). The dust jacket is typical for the era with fragile brownish colored paper and a design that matches the book. An excellent example of a 19th century dust jacket on a W.L. Allison Company book.