The Youth's Companion for 1891

Boston: Perry Mason & Co, 1890. First edition. Very Good. Oblong, 13 by 18 cm. Eight leaves of glossy stock, with a title page on the front cover, followed by a card for each day of the week, and on the same card, two months and chromolithographic illustrations and decoration. The vignettes are allegorical, of gnomes, a monk, Father Time, an angel, a Byzantine priest. They are the kind of illustrations one might find as frescoes in a stately office building of the day, and they together make this a most charming promotional calendar. The promotion is on the rear of most of the cards, where we find listed many titles in the Perry Mason & Co.'s catalogue of the day. (This is not Perry Mason as in Erle Stanley Gardner, but rather the boy's magazine company whose name Gardner appropriated for his defense attorney.) A very tiny closed tear and light wear besides. The calendar's leaves are held together by two strings.