This exhibition is different from our previous ones in that it focuses on books by one author. She is of particular interest not just because of her life and works, but her high output from the 1880s to 1918 gives us a marvelous set of publishers' bindings that represent the transition of cover art from Eastlake post-Victorian styling to Arts and Crafts, Japonisme, Art Nouveau and Poster style.
     Cover artists include Amy Richards, Blanche McManus Mansfield, Thomas Watson Ball, William Snelling Hadaway, Harry B. Matthews, Alice Cordelia Morse, Theodore B. Hapgood and the Decorative Designers.
     In addition to the published editions, the exhibition includes an original manuscript of one of the books, Thyra Varrrick. 250 pages of it are typescript with ink corrections, and the remainder of the 476 pages are ink, in Amelia Barr's handwriting. This gives a fascinating glimpse into the author's process, and a comparison with the printed book reveals further changes made between this manuscript and its publication.
     The exhibition also includes newspaper and magazine articles, short strories and serializations, which provide a window into the history of publishing at that time.   Seeing Thyra Varrick in a 1903 illustrated magazine serialization among advertisements for corsets and household supplies takes this romance set in 18th century Scotland and, for us, places it in the material culture of turn-of-the-century America.  The Man Between as a 1906 New York newspaper illustrated Sunday literary supplement is a very different reading experience than either a magazine or a book.