Lippincott Advertising Flyer with Stamps

Book publisher advertisements are fascinating works of industry ephemera. They certainly are among my favorite collecting pieces. Here is an unusual one.

In the mid teens of the 20th century J.B. Lippincott produced "poster stamp portraits" which the purchaser of the named books was invited to use as Book Plates. This little flyer included 6 "stamps" of popular Lippincott authors. The included authors were Hewlett, Barbour, Ingram, Lockhart, Lutz, and Walton. I am dating this piece from 1915 since the Barbour book "Heart's Content" was published in that year.

Most all advertising flyers from this era include only text and information. This one with the "stamps" is quite exceptional.

Hurst advertising postcard

Just as trade cards were popular vehicles for advertising in the 19th century, post cards were popular in the early years of the 20th century. Nonetheless, they are hard to find.

Here is an advertising postcard for Hurst & Company, a major player in the juvenile series book world from the early 1900's to 1919. During those years Hurst published 23 boy's juvenile series, a number of girl's series as well as mixed author's series, Alger Series and Henty Series. Some of their series-in particular the Frank Armstrong Series and the Rex Kingdon Series are difficult to find in dust jackets. In fact because of relatively low print runs, many of Hurst's series are difficult to complete in dust jacketed copies.

This is the only postcard advertisement for Hurst that I have seen but Hurst also advertised with flyers placed within its books. This was commonplace with many publishers. Flyers, accordion ad sheets, or mini pamphlets were placed within a book so the reader could be apprised of other books within their interest range.

Here is an example of a flyer found within a Hurst book