Their Hearts’ Desire – 1909 First Edition with Art by Harrison Fischer

Their Hearts’ Desire, by Frances Foster Perry,  Published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1909. First Edition. Date of printing October 1909. 6 color plates by Harrison Fischer and Decorations by Theodore B. Hapgood. 9.5″ x 6″, 152 pages. Lavender cloth boards with gilt and pale blue floral decorations and pastedown of left facing woman with brunette hair. Gilt titles front and spine; gilt and lavender margin and chapter decorations framing text and.  Light rub to corners and tail and head of spine; water mark to back board, otherwise boards are fine and binding is tight. Light foxing to endpapers; otherwise contents are fine without marks, tears or folds. A lovely copy.

Harrison Fisher (1875-1934) was an American illustrator.  At one time, Harrison Fisher’s ‘Fisher Girl’ was as well-known as ‘The Gibson Girl’. Cosmopolitan Magazine in the 1920’s called Harrison Fisher, “The World’s Greatest Artist” saying that “There is an underlying ideal that dominates his paintings. His ideal type has come to be regarded as the type of American beauty: girls, young with the youth of a new country, strong with the vitality of buoyant good health, fresh with clear-eyed brightness, athletic, cheerful, sympathetic, and beautiful.”

Theodore Brown Hapgood, Jr. (1871–1938) designed book covers, bookplates, posters, and a set of type ornaments, known as Hapgood florets. His cover designs were often based on floral and branch motifs, reminiscent of Renaissance woodcut borders seen on title pages and chapter headings.  002682 $90