Cover of “Christmasse Tyde” with special gift ribbon and greeting card attached
Christmasse Tyde was published in 1907. It was reviewed widely and considered a perfect holiday gift book, especially at the quite reasonable price of $2, including a gift box.
Paul Elder had a genuine predilection for collections of quotations. Perhaps they sold well, and no doubt Elder wanted to distinguish the Tomoye Press with original works. (To be sure, Paul Elder & Company sold traditional literature as well—all the great works from Shakespeare on down, including contemporary authors—but those were from other publishing houses. Elder, in general, did not publish works that had been previously published elsewhere.)
Jennie Day Haines authored six collections of quotations for Elder. She was born Jane Elizabeth Day in New York on 26 May 1853 and was an honor student at the Normal College of New York in 1871. She married William Pitt Haines in 1873, and later lived in New Rochelle, New York and Derby, Connecticut. She died in 1924 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.
Frontispiece and title page of “Christmasse Tyde”. Artwork by Gordon Ross.
Christmasse Tyde was printed at the Tomoye Press by John Henry Nash. The title page contains an excellent example of his trademark mitred rules: precisely measured perpendicular lines.
Unfortunately, the typography does not rise to the same level. The large uncial letters on the title page is Missal, beautiful but difficult to read. The text type is called Washington Text—ironic, because the typeface is really only suitable as a display type. Paul Elder clearly loved it, however, because it appears in a number of his publications during the first decade of the 1900s.
“Merrie Christmasse Tyde” and “Happie New Yeare” to all from paulelder.org.
Special gift box for “Christmasse Tyde”Special gift box with “doors” opened to reveal the book withinpage 84-85 of “Christmasse Tyde”. Note the copious use of mitred rules enclosing the header and text
Wraparound cover art for “What is a Kindergarten?”
The kindergarten (literally “children’s garden”) movement began in 1837 when Friedrich Fröbel founded a play and activity institute in the Bavarian town of Bad Blankenburg. His idea was to create a social transition for children between home and school, and that they should be nourished like plants in a garden. Fröbel’s ideas soon began to spread around Europe and then to America, where the first kindergarten opened in Boston in 1860 and the first public kindergarten in St Louis in 1873.
Title page of “What is a Kindergarten?”
In his 1901 book What Is a Kindergarten?, published by Elder & Shepard, landscape architect George Hansen takes the German word literally: he advocates physically putting the children in a garden. For Hansen there is room enough to do this: “The broad acres of our United States yet comparatively undivided … and [few] are too costly to furnish the ground upon which our kindergartens shall be founded.” Instead of “the basements of our school buildings,” Hansen wants the children out in the open:
We compare a man to an oak, a woman to a birch, a girl to a lily, a boy to a weed. This surely has foundation in reason. … Remember, every child in your charge is an Edison, every tot a Columbus, and the idealizing disposition of all of them sees a Garden of Eden in a vacant lot. I insist upon mere association of plants and children.
To bring home his point, Hansen included nine plates (see example below) of how to include garden areas on school grounds of different sizes and shapes. “If a glance at the series of plates gives the impression that every one of them might as well be the appointment of an area surrounding a private home as that of a kindergarten, their objects are served.” If Hansen were alive today, he would be joining Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters in evangelizing the Edible Schoolyard Project.
Page 12-13 of “What is a Kindergarten”
George Hansen (1863-1908) was born in Hildesheim, Germany. His grandfather, Rev. J. G. K. Oberdieck was a famous pomologist (the study of fruit) and was rewarded by the Prussian government with a guaranteed spot at the university for whichever of his grandchildren took a delight in horticulture. George was selected and attended the Royal College of Pomology in Potsdam. In 1885 he moved to England and worked for F. Sander & Company in their orchid house, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society.
Page 72 and Plate I of “What is a Kindergarten?”
Hansen came to America in 1887 and became foreman of the University of California Foothill Experiment Station in Jackson (Amador County). He became a distributor of exsiccatae, or specimens, of the Sierra Nevada flora, and wrote a book about it called Where the Big Trees Grow (1894). It was also in this year that Hansen completed his magnum opus, for which he is still best known, The Orchid Hybrids.
In 1896 Hansen suffered a spinal injury which made walking extremely painful. He moved to the Scenic Tract in Berkeley, on the north side of the University of California campus, and for the next twelve years scarcely left the confines of his house and garden. But during those twelve years he published What Is a Kindergarten? and continued to sell his botanical books and specimens. In 1902 Elder & Shepard also published five keepsakes called the Baby Roland Booklets, a photographic essay of his young son Roland.
George Hansen died at his home in Berkeley on 1 March 1908, from complications of his spinal injury. He was only 45 years old.
Rear (left) and front covers of the pamphlet “Charity”
Today we gather as families and communities and give thanks for what we have. I urge you to take time to help those less fortunate. The Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, now in its 26th year, provides one-time, temporary assistance to those experiencing an unexpected crisis. All of the Fund’s administrative expenses are covered by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and the San Francisco Chronicle. As a result, 100% of the money raised by the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund goes directly to help the families and communities it serves.
Pages 8-9 of “Charity”
Charity (1911) is one of many pamphlets of inspirational quotes published by Paul Elder & Co. The verses were chosen by Beulah Warner, of whom nothing else is known. The distinctive typeface is called Washington Text, and the green decorations are by Charles Frank Ingerson (re-used from A Book of Hospitalities in 1910).
I wish you a warm, happy and healthy Thanksgiving.
During their five-year collaboration between 1898 and 1903, Morgan Shepard was the artist, decorator and poet, while Paul Elder was the businessman and bookseller. Elder & Shepard published six of Shepard’s works during that time, mostly children’s stories. The prettiest of them is his slim volume of poetry The Standard Upheld, published in 1902. The title page decorations, as well as the initial capitals throughout the book, are almost certainly Shepard’s.
The opening poem, “Shall I Cast Down the Standard Of My Life?” is no doubt autobiographical. Shepard was a fighter (sometimes literally) all his life, and the metaphor of “me against the world, holding my standard high” is an apt image.
In contrast to Shepard, Paul Elder never published any original works. Though his byline appeared on seventeen of his publications, “compiler” would be a better word than “author”: they were all collections of quotations. Presumably Elder also wrote most of the copy for his in-house magazine Impressions as well.
Special binding for “The Standard Upheld”. Elder & Shepard’s normal bindings never looked like this.
This copy of The Standard Upheld was specially bound by bookbinders James A. Rutherford and Henry W. Thumler, whose shop was at 538 California, about three blocks from Elder & Shepard’s bookstore (and later at 117 Grant, just down the street).
Page 1 of “The Standard Upheld”, and poem from which the book’s title is takenPages 10-11 of “The Standard Upheld”
Extra, extra, read all about it! Wallace Irwin rewrites old fairy tales!
In contrast to Irwin’s Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, whose humor is obscure to modern readers, his 1904 Fairy Tales Up-To-Now is fairly accessible. The book contains five poetical satires of five classic children’s stories titled with tabloid newspaper headlines. Cinderella, a stenographer working for 50¢ a day, goes to the ball in a rented gown, but when the Prince discovers that her diamond slippers are just paste, he rejects her because he’s broke and needs a bride who’s wealthy. Cinderella, though, becomes a millionaire by selling faux-diamond slippers. Jack, of Beanstalk fame, rides off to slay the Standard Oil Giant, but is given a job instead, rises to the rank of treasurer and becomes a Giant himself, but then returns home to endow a library, gas-works and church.
A charming feature of the book are the front and back covers, which are flongs, temporary paper molds used for printing newspapers. Stereotype metal was poured over the flong, then the stereotype was wrapped around the press’s cylinder for printing. After the day’s press run the flongs were normally discarded, but here they were sent to Elder to be cut up into covers. Each individual copy of Fairy Tales Up-to-Now is therefore unique. With a newspaper index service, it should be possible to find the exact page a given flong was used to print. At least one flong was from the San Francisco Call, but Elder may have used flongs from other local newspapers as well. Fairy Tales Up-to-Now was also issued in paper wraps instead of flongs, perhaps cheaper but far less whimsical.
Thanks to Molly Schwartzburg and Andre Chaves for information about flongs.
