Ralph Henry Barbour Boxed Book

In the last post I showed a nice boxed set of a series from the 1870's. Boxes are not just seen with series/sets. There are many other styles and formats of boxed books.
Today I thought I would show a box that has a book by a previously noted author: Ralph Henry Barbour.

Barbour wrote a number of romance novels in the early 1900's Most were published by Lippincott. Some Lippincott books have been seen with pictorial dust jackets , others boxed with glassine jackets.





Here is a nice example. Most often the box cover is similar but not an exact duplicate of the book cover.
You can see that here.
This book , My Lady of the Fog, was published in 1908.
On one of the flaps of the box the particulars about the book including the price is noted.

Ralph Henry Barbour and Lippincott

Although Ralph Henry Barbour (1870-1944) is best known for the various sport's books he wrote (more than 100), he also penned a number of adult romances, fiction and mystery books.

Of the 14 adult romance books he wrote, 11 were published by J.B. Lippincott Company. The other three were published by Appleton, Richard Badger, and Moffat, Yard and Co.

The Lippincott books are quite exceptional. Cloth with gold gilt designs. Applique pictures on the cover. The pages were all glossy with border decorations and pictures. With a $1.50- $2.00 price tag they were special books.They were published between 1904 and 1915, simultaneously with the publication of Barbour's sports' books.




As is to be expected, Lippincott produced advertising flyers to announce these books. Appreciate that the June 5, 2009 entry in this blog showed some stamps promoting Lippincott books. The Barbour book, Heart's Content, can be seen there.

Shown here is an advertising flyer for An Orchard Princess which was published in 1905. I suspect all of the Lippincott Barbour books had these flyers. This is the only one I have seen

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.