With furr-iends like these, who needs enemies?

Emile Achard. The History of My Friends, or, Home Life with Animals. (New York, 1875)

Apparently it’s #NationalChickenMonth so here ya go.

Cover detail from: George P. Burnham, The History of the Hen Fever. (Boston, 1855)

Happy Birthday to Mary Shelley, English novelist and author of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein came out of a contest. Stuck indoors during a rainy vacation to Lake Geneva with Mary, Percy Shelley, and John William Polidori, Lord Byron proposed they each write a ghost story. Frankenstein was published two years later in 1818.

That same contest also gave us Polidori’s The Vampyre in 1819.

Image: Mary Shelley. Frankenstein; or, The modern Prometheus. (Boston, 1869).

Have you seen any shooting stars lately? The Perseids meteor shower is at its peak this week, get those wishes ready!

Rambosson, J. Astronomy. New York: D. Appleton and Co., [187-?]

We are loving the pictorial cover decoration on this copy of Wild Flowers of Colorado, especially those orange and green embellishments!

Compiled by Emma Homan Thayer, the text includes both illustrations of the flowers she gathered but also anecdotes about her experience along the way.

Emma Thayer. Wild Flowers of Colorado. New York: Cassell & Company, c1885.

Today is our 290th birthday, and to celebrate we would like some ice cream and cakes, please!

Not that you need a reason to have ice cream and cakes, because you don’t, but, still, 290 years seems like something to celebrate.

Ice-cream and cakes. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1907.

Loving the cover decoration on this copy of Ocean Gardens: Glimpses Beneath the Waters (London, 1857).

Want a glimpse beneath the covers?

Behold! Stunning hand colored plates of ocean and river garden aquaria!

Happy Pride Month! You know us, we love to celebrate everything with publishers’ bindings!

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we hope today’s publisher’s binding will help remind you to stop, take a deep breath, and be kind to yourself.

Ciccolina, Sophia Marquise A. Deep breathing. New York: M.L. Holbrook and Company, c1883.

In case you need a few ideas for that garden. (We know we sure do!)

Kemp, Edward. How to lay out a garden. New York : Wiley & Halsted, 1858