San Francisco bookseller & publisher, 1898-1968
Morgan Shepard published six of his own books during the Elder & Shepard partnership. One was a volume of poetry, and the other five were children’s books. The most successful of those (to judge from the extant copies available today) was Observations of Jay (A Dog) and Other Stories in 1900.
The book is furnished with delightful Art Nouveau illustrations, probably by Shepard himself.
Today Charles Keeler is known as a poet and author of The Simple Home, but in the 1890s he was best known as a naturalist. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, he took at job at the California Academy of Sciences (then located south of Market Street in San Francisco). In 1893 he wrote a long monograph for the Academy called “Evolution of the Colors of North American Land Birds,” a work admired at the time but whose science is today almost completely discredited.
By the end of the decade Keeler had decided that academia was not his cup of tea, and channeled his scientific work into writing for the armchair naturalist: Bird Notes Afield was published in 1899 by Elder & Shepard. Keeler describes the joys of birdwatching in his usual florid style:
We who know California think it the most glorious of lands. The winds of freedom blow across its lofty mountains and expansive plains. There is something untamed and elemental about its wildernesses, and a tender charm about its pastoral valleys. The everlasting seas thunder upon its bold, granite headlands, the pines lift their heads almost into the snow of its mountain tops, the sequoias rear their peerless shafts along the north coast and in isolated Sierra groves, while in the great interior valleys grow the dark, venerable live-0aks; the sycamores sprawl their hoary trunks aloft, and willows and alders wave their delicate foliage beside the streams. … In this land I invite you to wander with me, seeking out the birds. If we but look for them we shall find them everywhere. If we but listen to them, the desert as well as the garden shall resound with their songs.
Keeler then proceeds to describe the native birds of California from loon to lark, from gull to grosbeak:
If the junco is merry, the kinglets are the incarnation of feathered light-heartedness. No larger than your thumb, these little midgets are full of restless animation and nervious enthusiasm.
and
In the late afternoon the russet-backed thrushes begin their ethereal caroling, and presently the western night-hawk hies him from the privacy of his woodland retreat where his mottled brown plumage blends with the tree trunks.
Keeler organized Bird Notes Afield as a sort of calendar, with chapters such as “January in Berkeley,” “A Trip to the Farallones,” “April in Berkeley,” “Summer Birds of the Redwoods,” and “Nesting Time.” He paid particular attention to his home town of Berkeley, as a naturalist writes about what he sees and what he knows.
Bird Notes Afield was a popular title for Elder and Shepard. Originally published in October 1899, there was a second printing in May 1900. In 1899, they also published A First Glance at the Birds, which is simply the first chapter of Bird Notes Afield issued in paper wraps; this item is quite scarce.
A second edition of the entire work appeared in April 1907, with a new preface and index, issued with a dust jacket. Two cover variants have been seen, one with buckram over boards, the other with smooth brownish-green cloth over boards.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
