I have seen two advertising pieces over the years that have a number of book covers attached together. One pictured here has the covers of 5 books published by the Lothrop Publishing Company. As I have noted before D. Lothrop Company was succeeded by the Lothrop Publishing Company in 1895. In 1905 the bankrupt Lothrop Company was merged with Lee and Shepard. Thus these covers date between 1895 and 1904.
During this period of time Lothrop Publishing Company published numerous books of this ilk. That is, large books of fairy tales and simple stories for youngsters with illuminated board covers.It is unclear to me whether these joined covers were used by salesman or were used by stores as promotional pieces in their advertising.
The other cover piece similar to this I have seen was published by Henry Altemus Company. It included three books from the first edition of the Wee Books for Wee Folks. These books were published for only a short time in 1904. This piece is different from the Lothrop covers as there are no pictures included on the reverse side. That item is shown below.
This type of advertising ephemera is quite scarce.
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