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.

Franconia Series by Jacob Abbott

As has been noted before, Jacob Abbott was an incredibly prolific author juveniles in the 19th century. The ten volume Franconia Series was one of his series.

These moralistic stories revolve around Beechnut. He is a youngster from Switzerland who lives in the White Mountains and interacts with the other characters in the series.

The books as noted here were initially published in the 1850's by Harper and Brothers. As opposed to many of the other Abbott books , these stories were only published by Harper and Brothers (in the US), Allman published the English editions.



1. Malleville 1850
2. Mary Bell 1850
3. Ellen Linn 1852
4. Wallace 1850
5. Beechnut 1850
6. Stuvyesant 1853
7. Agnes 1853
8. Mary Erskine 1850
9. Rodolphus 1852
10. Caroline 1853

Later between 1878 and 1881 the books were reprinted by Harpers. At that time there were only 5 Franconia books. Each new book had two of the early books combined into one volume. They were as follows.

Beechnut/Rodolphus
Ellen Linn/Stuyvesant
Caroline/Agnes
Malleville/Wallace
Mary Erskine/Mary Bell

Two late editions were published by Harper and Brothers. The green book with the peripheral cover decoration was published in the early 1900's. The books with the reading boy was also published in the early 1900's but the books of this format had only one Franconia book within it as opposed to the two story books.

Jacob Abbott and the Pseudonym Erodore

Jacob Abbott has been mentioned previously. Although best known for his Rollo books, he authored numerous other series and single titles.

His early books from the 1820's and 1830's can be found easily today but the first editions of those titles are somewhat scarce. Not well known is that he wrote some titles early on using the pseudonyms of Erodore and Marianne. These books are seen rarely.

Apparently Abbott was teaching philosophy and mathematics at Amherst College when in 1924 he joined a secret literary society at the Andover Theological Seminary. A requirement at the Society was that each member create a palindromic pseudonym. Thus, Erodore was created. Using the Erodore name he wrote the book shown here.

For details about Abbott's "Erodore" books see A Bibliography of Jacob Abbott by Carl Weber.

Here is one of those very scarce Erodore books.

Marco Paul's Adventures by Jacob Abbott

Before Rollo travelled to Europe, Marco Paul meandered through the Northeast. Jacob Abbott's six book series was initially published in 1843. It was reprinted a number of times, the latest editions being done in the 1880's.

Abbott stated in his preface that the design of these books was not just to entertain readers with a "narrative of juvenile adventures" but also to help the reader in the "acquisition of knowledge and the formation of character". As was typical of the era, books for boys and girls were to educate, promote religion and inspire morality. It was not until the 1850's with Goulding's Young Marooners that juvenile books really sought to entertain. But even in the 1850's reviews cited the Marco Paul books as "among the best books which can be put into the hands of youth". Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review, William Dana, 1852

Although the Abbott books of this and his other series still sold well into the 1880's and 1890's , more and more they became niche books.

T. H. Carter 1844 T.H. Carter 1843



















In this series Marco, a boy of about twelve travelled with his cousin (and tutor) John Forester in the Pursuit of Knowledge. In fact initially the series was known as Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge. Later once B.B. Mussey in 1848 and then Harper and Brothers began reprinting the volumes in 1852 the title was expanded to Voyages and Travels in the Pursuit of Knowledge.

Initially all six volumes were Published by T.H. Carter & Company in Boston in 1843. Preceding the hardcover versions the stories were published in 12 monthly parts. These parts which were 12.5 cents each had 144 pages. I believe but am not sure that the serialized version appeared in the Girls' and Boys' Magazine edited by Mrs. S. Colman. The books were published throughout 1843.

In 1844 and 1845 the series was republished by T.H. Carter. As of 1845 the title page said 5th edition on the titles.

In 1844, 1845 and 1848 Benjamin B. Mussey of Boston also published the set. Of note is that these two publishers were printing the books at the same exact time in the same city.

Later in 1848 Wm. J. Reynolds published the set.


B.B. Mussey 1848


















Wm. J. Reynolds 1848


















Harper and Brothers 1852

Harper and Brothers did several reprint editions between 1852-1853 and later in 1880. The first four books were first done by Harper in 1852 and the last two were done in 1853.

It was not until the earliest of the Harper reprints that the name of Jacob Abbott appeared on the title page. Prior to this it said "By the Author of Rollo, Jonas and Lucy Books. THe Marco Paul series came boxed as a set by Harpers. They could also be purchased individually. In 1858 the books were 50 cents , by 1870 they were 90 cents each.



The books:
Marco Paul
1. In the City of New York
2. On the Erie Canal
3. In the Forests of Maine
4. In Vermont
5. In the City of Boston
6. At the Springfield Armory

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

A Rare Work of Jacob Abbott

Jacob Abbott (1803-1879) was a prolific 19th century author of children's books and religious works. His 10 Rollo's Travels books have been reprinted by upwards of 30 publishers in various formats. His other works The Franconia Stories, The Rollo Story Books, Harper Story Books among others are moralistic tales of children. Over the course of his life he penned more than 200 books. These are well described by Carl J. Weber in his "A Bibliography of Jacob Abbott" Colby College Press 1948. This volume lists all the titles although not all the various publishers' reprints. At least that is what I thought until recently.

A new piece by Jacob and his brother John S.C. Abbott has come to my attention.

The Abbott's produced drawing lessons for "schools and families". Published in 1845 by Saxton & Miles the they published an eight page pamphlet entitled "Directions to accompany Abbott's Series of Drawing Cards". Their pamphlet gives directions to the student on materials, proportion, perpendicularity, etc. The pamphlet as well as 26 "drawing cards" are contained within a box with the Clark & Austin imprint.


The cards-two of which are shown here- are of simple scenes of houses, trees, fields and the like.





Although many of Abbott's works are quite uncommon, I believe this piece to be among the rarest of his works.