Book cover designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman for Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett. Illustrated by Charles and Marcia Woodbury. Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894. PS 2132 .D4 1894

Descended from prominent New England families, Sarah Wyman spent her early childhood in Baltimore among her Wyman relatives, in a cultivated and philanthropic environment. When she returned to Lowell, Massachusetts, at 11, she was educated at home by a gifted tutor, who shaped her lifelong dedication to learning. After her marriage to successful Boston wool merchant, Henry Whitman, their move to Beacon Hill, afforded Sarah access to the wider world of the Boston elite: artists, writers, and educators. In 1868, she entered the studio of the successful, socially prominent artist William Morris Hunt, who had only recently begun to welcome women as students. Whitman's professional training was astonishingly brief. She studied with Hunt for three winters, studied drawing with his colleague William Rimmer, and twice—in 1877 and late 1878 or early 1879—went to France to study with Hunt’s former master, Thomas Couture. Although she lacked “just one year in the Academy,” considered a prerequisite for a successful career, she determined to move forward. In a letter to a patron, she described her “plan of life” as balancing a successful professional career amidst her obligations “as a householder,” her philanthropic interests, and her position in society. Even she admitted it was a “strange complex web” of a life. By 1881, one critic already judged Whitman “as representative of successful women-painters in Boston.” She did not limit herself to accepted feminine subjects: portraiture, still lifes, and landscapes. She turned to the field of design, an approach—encouraged by Couture, echoed in the English Arts and Crafts Movement, and actively supported by her mentor and benefactor, Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton—that viewed art and life as inseparable. Sarah Wyman Whitman Watercolor, "Niagara Falls," 1898 In the 1880s Whitman began to produce a steady stream of designs for book covers, stained glass, and interiors and became the first professional woman artist regularly employed by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin to give their mass-produced book covers a sense of simple elegance through line, color, and lettering. Responsible for a significant number of Houghton and Mifflin covers throughout the 1880s-90s, Whitman forged a new approach to book cover design using simple yet elegant forms, carefully chosen cloths and a distinctive lettering style. Her spare and elegant book designs, possibly in reaction to the rather “overwrought” covers - including the Eastlake style covers - that were the norm in the 1870s and 1880s, are important manifestations of the Art Nouveau style in America. Examples of “overwrought” covers of the 1870s and ‘80s “The typical book offered by the large American publishers of the mid-1880s sported a cover of moisture-resistant colored cloth, with a design die-stamped on it in black or gold. That design, generally concocted by the die-maker himself, might be a riot of type faces, borders, arabesques, and Japanese or Eastlake-style motifs. It might reproduce an illustration from inside the book. Or it might feature an incongruous vignette unrelated to the subject matter – perhaps a volume of critical essays with a bunch of daisies thrown across the cover,’ as designer Alice C. Morse later commented dryly. One thing you could count on, however: whatever the ornament, there was likely to be a lot of it. That is, until Sarah Wyman Whitman came along.” O’Donnell, Anne Stewart, “Telling Books by Their Covers,” Style 1900, Summer 2008. Before the Curfew and Other Poems Chiefly Occasional, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1883. Whitman reduced book decoration to the essential. Although she designed "special" editions in vellum with gold stamping, the majority of her work for the mass market employed two colors of cloth and a single color of ink for stamping. The production costs for Whitman's book covers were probably quite low when weighed against their effectiveness as advertising tools. In her “Notes of an Informal Talk on Book Illustration”, given before the Boston Art Students Association, Feb. 14, 1895, Whitman wrote: "…You have got to think how to apply elements of design to these cheaply sold books; to put the touch of art on this thing that is going to be produced at a level price, which allows for no handwork, the decoration to be cut with a die, the books to be put out by the thousand and to be sold at a low price…" Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's Stories, by Mrs. A.D. T. Whitney. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1893. Many authors were her friends, including Sarah Orne Jewett, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Correspondence between Whitman and publishers testifies to her involvement in the entire process of bringing a design to the public, as well as to her desire to faithfully represent the author's vision.  The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1897 In 20 years, Whitman designed well over 200 books, frequently incorporating her design signature, a “flaming heart.” Through her artistry and success, Sarah Wyman Whitman inspired many young women to enter the field of book design. Now, more than 130 years later, her work is still considered as unique and style-setting. Click here to view the notable, extensive Boston Public Library’s Sarah Wyman Whitman collection. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Whitman’s home in Boston's Beacon Hill was a salon for writers and artists, many of whom were her good friends. Her paintings can be found in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and her stained glass windows in Boston's Trinity Church and Parish House, New York's Grace Church, the Berwick Academy in Maine (Sarah Orne Jewett’s alma mater), and many smaller commissions for churches stretching from New York City to Albany, and along the New England coast from the North Shore to Cranberry Island, Maine. For Harvard’s Memorial Hall she designed both the elaborate south transept window and the Honor and Peace window on the south side of what is now Annenberg Hall. Fittingly, Whitman’s last works in glass—the panels Courage, Love, and Patience created for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition—are now installed in the Radcliffe College Room of the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library. "Honor and Peace" Window Annenberg Hall, Harvard University Funded by the Class of 1865 "This window commemorates those who surrendered their lives in the War of the Rebellion.” Whitman taught women’s Bible classes for 30 years, in winter at Trinity Church, in summer on the North Shore of Boston. She was a founder of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts; a benefactor of Radcliffe College, Howard University, Berea College, and Tuskegee Institute; and a generous patron of the arts.  An Island Garden, by Celia Thaxter. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895. Although her last years were marred by illness, the result of overwork, she continued to create at a lessened pace. Her death in 1904 was deeply mourned…as William James wrote to his brother, Henry: “She leaves a dreadful vacuum in Boston…and the same world is here—but without her to bear witness.” The Ramblers Lease, by Bradford Torrey. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1890

Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895. Illustrated by A.B. Frost. Reprint. 268 pp. Hardcover. Bindings designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman. An early illustrated edition of the first "bad boy" novel (not unlike Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). The decorative binding was designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman, the premier designer of the height of publisher bindings as well as the first professional woman artist to be regularly employed by Houghton Miffllin. She was also the first to use a design that wrapped around from the front board across the spine to the rear board. Like many of her designs, this simple color palate combined with distinctive lettering and decoration produces a clean, elegant effect. Publisher's cloth. Near fine, spine with a slight lean.

Sarah Wyman Whitman was an original and compelling figure in late nineteenth century Boston. Very much a public personality, she was a painter...

Descended from prominent New England families, Sarah Wyman spent her early childhood in Baltimore among her Wyman relatives, in a cultivate...

Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904) pioneered the role of artist-designer in the book industry and in the process revolutionized trade bookbinding. A highly-regarded Boston artist and socialite who gathered around herself a salon comprised of many of the city and region’s best-known writers, she adopted the role of mediator between her author friends and the publisher George Mifflin, whom she knew socially. Her work echoed the Arts and Crafts Movement that viewed art and life as inseparable; she wrote that “all forms of labor are beautiful and sacred because…it all has the stamp of nobility, being essential to the world’s need.” As Betty Smith has noted, Whitman became “the first professional woman artist regularly employed by a Boston publisher to give their mass-produced book covers a sense of simple elegance through line, color, and lettering.” Using the book as a flat, two-dimensional canvas, Whitman created cover designs that were notable for their simplicity, for the use of what we now call negative space, and for combining elements to generate a powerful balance of tension and repose. Most of her designs combine calligraphy with stylized floral shapes, many of which make subtle reference to the text, although she seldom depicted story elements directly and never worked in the poster style. She popularized the three-piece cover, frequently using white cloth for the spine and a contrasting color and texture for the covers, and she also pioneered the practice of signing her work, using a logo of a flaming heart and her initials. Her distinctive calligraphy ranges from a deliberately uneven and rustic sans serif to a formal inscriptional style. The face of modernism in her time, she was, in the words of Charles Gullans, “a forerunner who was 25 years older than the reforming generation that observed, understood, and widely imitated her example in the early 1890s.” Sarah Whitman, more than anyone else, brought the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement to life for average Americans by creating affordable works of art for the home. In addition to her pioneering book designs, Whitman was an accomplished stained glass artist, painter, and designer of monuments. Fine examples of her stained glass can be seen at Harvard University and Trinity Church in Boston, and at several other churches and schools. She provided financial support for educational institutions for women and African-Americans, supported public housing reform, and was a founding member of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts. For more information please contact: Rare Books & Manuscripts Department McKim Building, 3rd Floor Boston Public Library 700 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02116 617-536-5400, ext. 2225 [email protected] www.bpl.org/research/rb/index.htm

Descended from prominent New England families, Sarah Wyman spent her early childhood in Baltimore among her Wyman relatives, in a cultivated and philanthropic environment. When she returned to Lowell, Massachusetts, at 11, she was educated at home by a gifted tutor, who shaped her lifelong dedication to learning. After her marriage to successful Boston wool merchant, Henry Whitman, their move to Beacon Hill, afforded Sarah access to the wider world of the Boston elite: artists, writers, and educators. In 1868, she entered the studio of the successful, socially prominent artist William Morris Hunt, who had only recently begun to welcome women as students. Whitman's professional training was astonishingly brief. She studied with Hunt for three winters, studied drawing with his colleague William Rimmer, and twice—in 1877 and late 1878 or early 1879—went to France to study with Hunt’s former master, Thomas Couture. Although she lacked “just one year in the Academy,” considered a prerequisite for a successful career, she determined to move forward. In a letter to a patron, she described her “plan of life” as balancing a successful professional career amidst her obligations “as a householder,” her philanthropic interests, and her position in society. Even she admitted it was a “strange complex web” of a life. By 1881, one critic already judged Whitman “as representative of successful women-painters in Boston.” She did not limit herself to accepted feminine subjects: portraiture, still lifes, and landscapes. She turned to the field of design, an approach—encouraged by Couture, echoed in the English Arts and Crafts Movement, and actively supported by her mentor and benefactor, Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton—that viewed art and life as inseparable. Sarah Wyman Whitman Watercolor, "Niagara Falls," 1898 In the 1880s Whitman began to produce a steady stream of designs for book covers, stained glass, and interiors and became the first professional woman artist regularly employed by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin to give their mass-produced book covers a sense of simple elegance through line, color, and lettering. Responsible for a significant number of Houghton and Mifflin covers throughout the 1880s-90s, Whitman forged a new approach to book cover design using simple yet elegant forms, carefully chosen cloths and a distinctive lettering style. Her spare and elegant book designs, possibly in reaction to the rather “overwrought” covers - including the Eastlake style covers - that were the norm in the 1870s and 1880s, are important manifestations of the Art Nouveau style in America. Examples of “overwrought” covers of the 1870s and ‘80s “The typical book offered by the large American publishers of the mid-1880s sported a cover of moisture-resistant colored cloth, with a design die-stamped on it in black or gold. That design, generally concocted by the die-maker himself, might be a riot of type faces, borders, arabesques, and Japanese or Eastlake-style motifs. It might reproduce an illustration from inside the book. Or it might feature an incongruous vignette unrelated to the subject matter – perhaps a volume of critical essays with a bunch of daisies thrown across the cover,’ as designer Alice C. Morse later commented dryly. One thing you could count on, however: whatever the ornament, there was likely to be a lot of it. That is, until Sarah Wyman Whitman came along.” O’Donnell, Anne Stewart, “Telling Books by Their Covers,” Style 1900, Summer 2008. Before the Curfew and Other Poems Chiefly Occasional, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1883. Whitman reduced book decoration to the essential. Although she designed "special" editions in vellum with gold stamping, the majority of her work for the mass market employed two colors of cloth and a single color of ink for stamping. The production costs for Whitman's book covers were probably quite low when weighed against their effectiveness as advertising tools. In her “Notes of an Informal Talk on Book Illustration”, given before the Boston Art Students Association, Feb. 14, 1895, Whitman wrote: "…You have got to think how to apply elements of design to these cheaply sold books; to put the touch of art on this thing that is going to be produced at a level price, which allows for no handwork, the decoration to be cut with a die, the books to be put out by the thousand and to be sold at a low price…" Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's Stories, by Mrs. A.D. T. Whitney. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1893. Many authors were her friends, including Sarah Orne Jewett, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Correspondence between Whitman and publishers testifies to her involvement in the entire process of bringing a design to the public, as well as to her desire to faithfully represent the author's vision.  The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1897 In 20 years, Whitman designed well over 200 books, frequently incorporating her design signature, a “flaming heart.” Through her artistry and success, Sarah Wyman Whitman inspired many young women to enter the field of book design. Now, more than 130 years later, her work is still considered as unique and style-setting. Click here to view the notable, extensive Boston Public Library’s Sarah Wyman Whitman collection. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Whitman’s home in Boston's Beacon Hill was a salon for writers and artists, many of whom were her good friends. Her paintings can be found in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and her stained glass windows in Boston's Trinity Church and Parish House, New York's Grace Church, the Berwick Academy in Maine (Sarah Orne Jewett’s alma mater), and many smaller commissions for churches stretching from New York City to Albany, and along the New England coast from the North Shore to Cranberry Island, Maine. For Harvard’s Memorial Hall she designed both the elaborate south transept window and the Honor and Peace window on the south side of what is now Annenberg Hall. Fittingly, Whitman’s last works in glass—the panels Courage, Love, and Patience created for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition—are now installed in the Radcliffe College Room of the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library. "Honor and Peace" Window Annenberg Hall, Harvard University Funded by the Class of 1865 "This window commemorates those who surrendered their lives in the War of the Rebellion.” Whitman taught women’s Bible classes for 30 years, in winter at Trinity Church, in summer on the North Shore of Boston. She was a founder of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts; a benefactor of Radcliffe College, Howard University, Berea College, and Tuskegee Institute; and a generous patron of the arts.  An Island Garden, by Celia Thaxter. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895. Although her last years were marred by illness, the result of overwork, she continued to create at a lessened pace. Her death in 1904 was deeply mourned…as William James wrote to his brother, Henry: “She leaves a dreadful vacuum in Boston…and the same world is here—but without her to bear witness.” The Ramblers Lease, by Bradford Torrey. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1890

File name: 06_04_000066 Local call number: A.3820.3 Title: The wind of destiny [Front cover] Creator/Contributor: Whitman, Sarah (Binding designer); Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, 1847-1930 (Author) Genre: Book covers Date created: 1886 Physical description: 1 item : book cover Summary/Abstract: Brown cloth, black stamped lettering and lamp with smoke swirl. Provenance notes: Artz Fund Location: Boston Public Library, Special Collections, Rare Books Rights: No known copyright restrictions.

File name: 06_04_000011 Local call number: Kleist Title: The song of Hiawatha [Front cover] Creator/Contributor: Whitman, Sarah (Binding designer); Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882 (Author) Genre: Book covers Date created: 1895 (approximate) Edition: New popular edition Physical description: 1 item : book cover Summary/Abstract: Brick cloth, gold stamped lettering, arrows, birds, and water. Location: Boston Public Library, Special Collections, Herbert E. Kleist Collection Rights: No known copyright restrictions.

File name: 06_04_000154 Local call number: PZ3.L5145Q Title: A Quaker girl of Nantucket [Front cover] Creator/Contributor: Whitman, Sarah (Binding designer); Lee, Mary Catherine (Author) Genre: Book covers Date created: 1889 Physical description: 1 item : book cover Summary/Abstract: Brown cloth, dark brown stamped woman next to tree, gold stamped lettering and harbor scene. General notes: Title lettering is by Sarah Whitman. Extent of Whitman's input on the rest of the design is uncertain. Provenance notes: Gift of Stuart Walker Location: Boston Public Library, Boston Public Library Collection Rights: No known copyright restrictions.

File name: 06_04_000030 Local call number: PZ7.A57Sto5 Title: The story of a bad boy [Front cover] Creator/Contributor: Whitman, Sarah (Binding designer); Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 1836-1907 (Author) Genre: Book covers Date created: 1895 Physical description: 1 item : book cover Summary/Abstract: Green cloth, maroon stamped lettering and flower design, gold embossed overlay. Location: Boston Public Library, Special Collections, Alice M. Jordan Collection Rights: No known copyright restrictions.

File name: 06_04_000023a Local call number: Kleist Title: The great remembrance and other poems [Back cover, spine, and front cover] Creator/Contributor: Whitman, Sarah (Binding designer); Gilder, Richard Watson, 1844-1909 (Author) Genre: Book covers Date created: 1893 Physical description: 1 item : book cover Summary/Abstract: Cream cloth, gold stamped lettering and flower. Location: Boston Public Library, Special Collections, Herbert E. Kleist Collection Rights: No known copyright restrictions.