Merry Christmas from D. Lothrop and Company

Last year around Christmas I showed a nice D. Lothrop and Company trade card from about 1886. This card is identical on the reverse to that one. The front shows the same little girl in a different scene. Clearly Lothrop produced a series of cards for the holidays.

Of interest is that last year a very alert reader noted that the little girl wore glasses- very unusual to see on a trade card. On that card the little girl was reading and perhaps needed glasses. On this card the little girl is playing with her dolls and has no glasses.

''Happy Holidays"

James Miller , New York Publisher Trade Card

James Miller was a New York Publisher active between 1860 and 1883. It succeeded the C.S. Francis publishing house. Its areas of concentration were juvenile books and illustrated gift books. Miller is thought to be the first that made a practice of bringing out books in series as boxed sets. In the later years of James Miller it was thought to be more of a bookseller than a book publisher.

James Miller was considered one of the giants of New York publishing in the mid-nineteenth century . Miller died in 1883 at the age of 61 at which point the James Miller publishing company publisher also passed away.

An obituary in the American Bookseller stated that his "immediate cause of death was due to a shock received from papers served upon him" related to a lawsuit. How simple a time must the 19th century have been!

In my 2003 bibliography I included 28 James Miller juvenile series. I suspect that there will be quite a few more in the upcoming revision.

Here is a nice trade card for this publisher. Between 1878 and 1883 Miller was at the 779 Broadway address.