MY BOOKHOUSE: AN ILLUSTRATED TREASURY OF CHILDREN’S CLASSICS, IN ORIGINAL PAINTED WOODEN “BOOK HOUSE”
MILLER, Olive Beaupré. My Bookhouse. Chicago: The Bookhouse for Children, (1925-28). Six volumes. ISSUED WITH: My Travelship. Chicago: The Bookhouse for Children, (1925-27). Three volumes. Altogether nine volumes. My Bookhouse: octavo, original green cloth with mounted cover illustrations, pictorial endpapers, top edges gilt; My Travelship: quarto, bound to match. Housed together in original painted wooden "book house." $4500.
Early printing of the beloved My Bookhouse series, “the first collection of children’s literature that was graded to meet the developing needs and abilities of children at different ages,” and illustrated by some of the foremost illustrators of the period. This is a complete set of six original volumes, together with the complete three volumes of My Travelship, the two series brought together under one roof in the original publisher’s wooden “book house.”
"Olive Beaupré's principal aspiration since childhood had been to become a writer, and by the age of seven she was filling notebooks with stories of her own making. An insatiable reader, she also had a penchant for drawing, and after reading a book she would often write a brief review, fully illustrated with her own drawings" (Taylor, Illinois Historical Journal, 283). Later in life she began writing rhymes and stories to entertain her child, and was encouraged by her husband Harry to publish some of her writings. In 1919 Olive Beaupré Miller got the idea for My Bookhouse, launching her venture by selling subscriptions to a six volume set— peddled door-to-door by her force of "Bookhouse Ladies." Three years later, the sixth volume was published and the full set was offered in a cardboard "house." The additional series of My Travelship appeared in 1926 and a painted wooden book house (offered here) was included as an incentive to complete the set. "The utilization of women in all phases of its business activity was one of the unique aspects of the Book House for Children. Not only was there an all-woman sales force, but the majority of the employees were women" (Taylor, 30). This delightful treasury of classic children's tales gathers works by authors ranging from John Milton to Carl Sandburg, as well as many folktales, all embellished by some of the premier illustrators of the time, including Dorothy Hope Smith, Katherine Dodge, Maud and Miska Petersham, Edward Kemble, Willy Pogány, Johnny Gruelle and, predominantly, Donn P. Crane, one of America's first "fantasy" artists. My Bookhouse "was the first collection of children's literature that was graded to meet the developing needs and abilities of children at different ages" (Smith College). In Miller's words, "The stories and rhymes selected must be graded to the child's understanding at different periods of his growth, graded as to vocabulary, as to subject matter and as to complexity of structure and plot." Owner signature in pencil.
Texts fine, Volumes I,II, and III of My Bookhouse with extensive restoration to cloth bindings and endpapers; other volumes with small abrasions and rubbing to extremities of original cloth. Wooden house with a bit of rubbing and wear.