The Purple Parasol

The Purple Parasol

George Barr McCutcheon

Illustrations by Harrison Fisher, Decorations by Chas. B. Falls

New York: Dodd, Mead and Company

1905

These covers are green ribbed cloth. The back is plain, but the front cover and spine have the hallmark look of Art Noveau. The front cover is broken into three vertical boxes with green two-tone borders. The outside boxes are stamped with tall vines of upright bluebells that are lavender on light green vines with dark green leaves. The central box has the gilt stamped title and author's name. The spine imitates the front cover with the border copied at the top and bottom and a vine of bluebells which separate the gilt stamped title and author's name from the gilt stamped publisher's name.
The endpapers are a mass-produced repeating pattern in lavender on white of a putto holding a parasol above its head. The pastedown side of the endpaper and the loose leaf side of the endpaper face one another and the putti alternate in squares with a pattern of dots in the surrounding squares.
The paper is made of wood pulp and while the foredge was supposed to be deckled edges (uncut), some pages were unopened (folds of the paper along the foredge or top of the textblock) and when the first owner opened the pages, they did so by taking huge chunks out of the margins of the pages giving new meaning to a deckled edge.
The frontispiece and the plates are printed on glossy paper using the technique of offset-lithography. The vignettes throughout the book are photolithographic illustrations.
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George Barr McCutcheon was an American novelist of adult fiction. His most famous book is the Graustark, the first of his series about a small European country and their royal family's multi-generational story. Before Graustark, McCutcheon was a journalist, but after that novel, he devoted his life to writing books.
McCutcheon lived from 1866-1928.
Harrison Fisher was an American illustrator of magazines and books. He is remembered for his drawings of women.
Fisher lived from c.1875-1934.

Literature

SPECIAL PS3525 .A187 Pu 1905

Hardcover book, 7.75 x 5.5 inches

English

This book has another record in the "Beautiful Books" Exhibit Collection.
This book can be seen in the photograph, Display Case 6.
This is a curator favorite in the "Beautiful Books" Highlights Collection.

This book is also featured in our Damaged Books digital exhibit. To see that record, please use this link: The Purple Parasol.
This book is included in a video in our Damaged Books digital exhibit: Want a little spaghetti with your Don Quixote?

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