American Poet Series - binding variants

The topic of leather binding variants (brown and blue) arose on another thread concerning Machiavelli's The Prince. Over the years I've come across several different variants in the LEC "American Poets" series, shown in the table below:

Biblio # LEC Biblio desc My Library
Poe, Edgar Allen 153 black black
Longfellow 162 red black
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 168 black black
Whittier, John Greenleaf 171 green burnt-orange
Bryant, William Cullen 177 black black
Dickinson, Emily 227 black black

What other variant colors from the above have you come across?

I’ve only seen copies of the Whittier and it is interesting to me because the Quarto-Millenary only states that it was bound in “Full Green Sheepskin” by the Russell-Rutter Company, yet I’ve acquired two copies and don’t believe either was ever green. The first copy I came across was in poor condition and it looked like the burnt-orange you listed above. There is a copy currently on eBay with photos that shows that color, which I always assumed was a sunburned green.



This is what my copy looked like, but I had it rebound because it was in even worse condition with the spine completely detached and scotch tape used to hold the boards together. Why did I rebind it? I’ll get to that in a little bit. In the meantime, I found a picture on eBay of a NF copy that shows the “full green sheepskin” as described in the QM:



Again, my assumption was that the green left out in a sunny room for 75 years or so (this was published in 1945) would probably turn to the burnt-orange. Your post made me wonder, though, since you’ve seen variants in the sheepskin colors for this series. While browsing my favorite local bookstore last week (fully masked), I came across this copy:



This is obviously “full black sheepskin” and it would seem that Russell-Ritter Company, which had bound The Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson three months before in this color had decided to do at least a few of Whittier’s in the same color. I wonder if this was a request of some of the LEC members to keep their American Poet Series uniform? The copy is 880, so it’s not an out-of-series binding.

I find it interesting that The Poems of Whittier can be found with three distinctly different-colored bindings and your post informed me that this series may have this in common.

Finally, I want to share my first experience in rebinding a “poor” LEC. While I don’t strive to attain LECCOL levels of quality, I decided to go to the expense of having my original edition of this book rebound. Why would I do this since it can be found easily for a surprisingly cheap price in excellent condition? (The black one cost me $17 last week at the store with slipcase). It makes no sense monetarily to rebind, but I share the late Don’s philosophy that this book, along with most of the LEC’s output, deserves to be saved from the recycle bin when the intererior is in perfectly excellent condition.

Also, there was something special about this copy of the book. I found it at a Half Price Books for $9 and, flipping through it after removing the rubber-band that held the spine onto the boards along with the tape, I was excited to see this colophon:

Rebinding (now there is a fourth binding for this book!): I worked with Ars Obscura in Seattle to rebind this. Since the color listed in the QM was Green, I chose a green buckram and asked that the inlaid title and spine leather be used, if possible. The work done by Mia, was very satisfactory. I went with buckram instead of leather because I like the durability and leather would’ve doubled the overall cost of the binding.







I also found a beautiful marbled paper from an online source that was hand-made in Brazil. I felt the colors matched perfectly and provided them to the binder to glue to the end-papers. I’m very happy with how this turned-out and hope this inspires others to save any “poor” copies they run across.

>3 BionicJim: Nice rebind.

>1 Sport1963:

Ray Holden? You'll have to enlighten me.

Incidentally, the black copy of Whittier dos not look like sheepskin--that pebble texture is more like pigskin. Sheepskin is usually smooth, at least it is on all the LECs I have that are sheepskin. That copy certainly has weathered extremely well--wonder if it's a rebind. (Also, I would like to hear about your own rebind. Did you use leather or cloth? I have a copy of The House of Seven Gables with the boards detached that needs a rebind and am trying to decide whether to try to retain the quarter leather original binding with the scuffs or replace it with cloth since I won't use leather.)

>3 BionicJim:

Gorgeous job! Even Don Floyd would have been envious!

>2 BionicJim: Very cool Bionic Jim. That colophon signature certainly looks like an elderly hand of the original signer. All in all I think war shortages had a lot to do with the binding variants tht exit. I am almost positive that the burnt orange is a variant in its own right, and not a sun fading or oxidation of the green version. Thanks for the post and your pics.

>6 Sport1963: My assumption that the burnt-orange binding was not intentional was based on my experience with this otherwise good condition copy of Sindbad:

>5 Django6924: “ Ray Holden? You'll have to enlighten me.”

RJ Holden was the illustrator of The Poems of Whittier. The Colophon on the copy I rebound has his initials in the place of the limitation number and is signed by Louis Untermeyer, the editor of this book (possibly the whole series) and who wrote the introduction and comments on a variety of the poems. The blind stamp is the LEC logo and reads “This is one of 15 presentation copies - out of series.”

The condition of the book led me to presume Mr. Holden was proud of his work and it was much read and probably laying about for display in his home/workplace. There are about a 1/2 dozen notes in the book on the illustrations that appear to identify the real-life locations he used as inspiration.

Here’s a couple of examples:





Mr. Holden also illustrated at least two other LEC books - The Flowering of New England from 1941 and, much later, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers from 1975.

>8 BionicJim:

Oh, that R.J. Holden!

Since I have all those books (except the LEC Whittier, I'm not sure why my mind blanked on him. (Although I would guess age probably has something to do with it.)

I would say you have a real treasure there and it was definitely worth rebinding.

>3 BionicJim: The buckram works well!