Sheldon and Company-19th Century Publisher

Sheldon and Company was an important New York publisher in the mid-1800's. My interest in it stems from its publication of juvenile series books. In my bibliography published in 2003 I described 23 series. In the upcoming new edition there will be 49 series noted and discussed.

The company was founded by Smith Sheldon. Initially urged by Baptist friends to publish denominational books, he moved to New York and purchased the interest of the Mr. Law in Lamport, Blakeman and Law and thus founded Sheldon, Lamport and Blakeman in 1854.

Lamport retired in 1856 and thus Sheldon, Blakeman and Company was born. In 1859 Blakeman left the firm to join Albert Mason in a new firm Blakeman and Mason. So Sheldon and Company was founded.

I am enclosing copies of two letterheads from 1859. These are quite informative since they list partners in the firm and show a partial catalogue of Sheldon'd booklist.

Some of the most popular of the Sheldon books were those series written by Jacob Abbott. The ten volume Rollo's Tour in Europe Series was published in a number of formats. In addition Abbot's Florence Stories, Harlie Series, the Rollo Books, Rollo's Story Books, and Abbott's
American Histories were all popular series published by Sheldon

Sheldon published series by other well known authors also. These included the Cottage Series by Peter Parley, Home Stories by T. S. Arthur and Jack Trowbridge's Brighthope Series.

In addition to Abbott's works, Sheldon published a couple of extremely popular travelogue juvenile series. These included the Spectacle Series by Sarah. W. Lander and Walter's Tour in the East by Daniel Eddy. The Percy Family, another travelogue series by Daniel Eddy was co-published with Graves and Young in the early 1860's


The formats of the Sheldon books went through a standard evolution. The early books were blindstamped with various cover patterns and gold gilt titles and decorations on the spines.

By the early 1870's the covers of most of the series books also had gold gilt designs and lettering. Examples are shown here.


The Sheldon series books originally could be bought individually or in boxed sets. Finding single books is not especially hard. Finding them in boxed sets is next to impossible.

The Rollo Series -Reprints of the 1860-1880's

Sheldon 1864


On June 24, 2009 I discussed the Rollo Travels Series' first editions. I mentioned that after the first group of early publishers that there were a myriad of others who published these books. I thought I would review this over a few posts.

What is a myriad. By my count there are 22 publishers who printed this series between Taggard and Thompson's last publication and about 1910. Many of these houses had multiple different formats of these books.

Here are the the next group of Rollo Travels printings which came in the 1860's , 1870's and 1880's. The publishers were:

Sheldon and Company
D. Lothrop and Company
John R. Anderson
John B. Alden
DeWolfe, Fiske and Company




Sheldon 1868

Sheldon 1869



Sheldon and Company was the most prolific of the group. It published editions in 1864, 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1880 that I am aware of (I suspect that there were more). The earliest of these editions is seen with blind stamped covers. Later editions have gold gilt decorative cover patterns. As with the general pattern of juvenile books of the 19th century. The plain covers gave way to the more colorful (pictorial or gilt laden ) covers as the 1870's passed. The first Sheldon book with gold gilt on the cover was published in 1870. As you can see, the 1869 book was blind stamped. By 1880 the gold gilt cover of the Sheldon book was more vertical than that of the 1870 book. By the time that Sheldon sold the plates in 1882 it had made over $60,000 in profit from the 10 book Rollo Series reprints




Sheldon 1870

Sheldon 1880








Interestingly enough the John R. Anderson book of 1881 uses the same gold gilt pattern on the cover as the 1880 Sheldon book. The decorative border pattern differs however.

After Anderson, Lothrop published this series in the 1880's. My Lothrop copy has Anderson ads in the back indicating that when Anderson went defunct, Lothrop got the plates from it.



John R. Anderson



DeWolfe, Fiske and Company published their Rollo Series between 1885 and about 1888. DeWolfe did buy many of the Anderson plates in 1885 and it appears that the these DeWolfe Rollo's were part of that buy.










DeWolfe, Fiske and Company


DeWolfe and Lothrop used the same covers for the series. Although I am not sure, I suspect that the Lothrop copies preceded the DeWolfe printings.

John Alden also published this series in the 1883. Its book was smaller (6.24 x 4.25) but as with all the others, it has the sailboat title page.


The last two books shown are the D. Lothrop and Co.
and the John B. Alden book.

Rollo Travels by Jacob Abbott-First Editions

(For a complete updated review of this series and its publishers-see:
http://www.henryaltemus.com/Rollo/index.html)
Jacob Abbott (1803-1879) was a minister and author of great note in the mid 19th century. Although he was a life long Congregational minister and teacher, his accomplishments as a writer are the main focus of this and follow-up entries about Abbott.

Abbott is most well known for the Rollo books. These didactic little books were vehicles to teach morality to youngsters. Of the several series that Rollo either starred in or was a supplemental character, the most popular was the 10 book Rollo's Tour of Europe Series. In these tales Rollo and Mr. George toured Europe learning more about character and morality than the individual lands visited.



These books were initially published between 1853 and 1858. Thereafter up until the early 1900's they were reprinted by at least 30 publishers in at least 50 formats.

Later printings are frequently misidentified as first editions. The reality is that the first six books were initially published by W.J. Reynolds of Boston and volumes 7-10 were first published by Reynolds' successor, Brown, Taggard and Chase. Both of these companies used the same maroon cloth cover and the same boat title page.

Brown, Taggard and Chase (BT and C) also reprinted volumes 1-6 when they took over from Reynolds-thus publishing the second editions of those volumes. Later in 1861-1862 Brown and Taggard succeeded BT and C and reprinted the whole series.

The early history of printings is relatively simple to follow as Fred'k A. Brown succeeded Brown and Taggard in 1862 and Taggard and Thompson followed in 1863. Both published the entire series. Thereafter the myriad of reprints from various publishers began. Because a number of these later publishers used the same title page with the picture of the sailboat, it can be hard to discern the dates of later printings. This will be discussed in a future blog entry.


The Series:
Rollo
1. On the Atlantic 1853
2. In Paris 1854
3. In Switzerland 1854
4. In London 1855
5. On the Rhine 1855
6. In Scotland 1856
7. In Geneva 1857
8. In Holland 1857
9. In Naples 1858
10. In Rome 1858