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[C.1840s–1850s, “Warrior Bride” & Other Women-Focused Engravings within De Luxe Album, likely gathered by or presented to Maria A. Melvin].
[C.1840s–1850s, “Warrior Bride” & Other Women-Focused Engravings within De Luxe Album, likely gathered by or presented to Maria A. Melvin].

[C.1840s–1850s, “Warrior Bride” & Other Women-Focused Engravings within De Luxe Album, likely gathered by or presented to Maria A. Melvin].

Octavo sized album of engravings, mostly depicting women; includes portraits and genre scenes with women


De luxe c.1840s–1850s album kept Maria A. Melvin of Massachusetts. The album comprises 26 engravings, 17 of which depict women. They include portraits; women character “types;” women literary characters; and genre scenes featuring women.

Newspaper clippings on the endpapers supply some genealogical clues about the Melvin family as well as the Meacom family into which Melvin married. Melvin was likely a teenager or young woman in Charlestown (Boston), Massachusetts when she assembled or was given the album.

In 1859, Melvin married George E. Meacom, age 26—the son of Ebenezer and Lucinda Meacom. Melvin herself may have been born around the same time as her husband, c.1833, thus dating the album to the 1840s or 1850s. The inclusion in the album of two engravings from painter Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life series (1842) and an engraving showing writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (born 1804) in his forties may support this supposition.

An newspaper obituary notice laid into the album reports the death of “Maria A. Melvin Meacom, formerly of Charlestown of an old and respected Charlestown family, at Lynn [Massachusetts].”


Description: [C.1840s–1850s, “Warrior Bride” & Other Women-Focused Engravings within De Luxe Album, likely gathered by or presented to Maria A. Melvin].

[Likely Massachusetts, c.1840s–1850s]. [26] leaves of plates; tissue guards. Small 8vo. Presentation Binding: full red, straight grain sheep; boards with gilt rolled edges; spine rules; marbled endpapers. Newspaper clippings mounted on verso of free, front endpaper, one loose clipping, plus one clipped illustration “scrap” mounted opposite. Gilt stamping on upper cover: “Maria A. Melvin.” Spine nearly perished; upper board starting; lacking one tissue guard and possibly lacking one plate; fair.

[3726495]

Price: $75.00