Cover Treasure: The Life and Art of Margaret Armstrong
by: Lowell Thing

Hardcover. Catskill NY, Black Dome Press, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, terra-cotta boards stamped with gold design. 442 pages illustrated in color. For a brief twenty years as the 19th turned into the 20th century, Americans were often beguiled, entertained, and sometimes dazzled by the attractively designed and often gold-laden covers of the books that they read. In a period when art was breaking from academy-bound tradition in search of new directions, publishers realized as never before that to sell a book, you needed an attention-getting book cover. Among the hundreds of artists who designed these covers, one stood above the rest. Scribner's, Putnam's, and Dodd Mead were among the publishers vying for the talents of Margaret Armstrong. Her inventive, elegant, and beautifully colored designs and lettering were self-identifying; they hardly needed the tiny monogram that she often added to her designs. During her career, she would design over 300 book covers and decorate the pages of many books with her drawings. Her art would become visible in the libraries and on the parlor tables of thousands of American homes. In time, this relatively unheralded period of American publishing history would be rediscovered. Today, examples of Margaret Armstrong's work are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like new copy.