Miniature Biographies Published by Duke Brand Cigarettes
Park Place, New York: Knapp & Company, 1890s. A complete set of 48 absolutely charming miniature chromolithographed biographies, published as part of an advertising campaign for Duke Brand Cigarettes. Each was issued in a box of cigarettes in a "collect-them-all"-type marketing ploy. The complete set here includes 7 women and 41 men. Each measures approx. 3" by 1.5", is approx. 16 pp., and stapled in original chromolithographed illustrated wrappers. The wrappers are particularly well-designed, and feature a portrait of the subject on the upper wrapper, and an allegorical/metaphorical illustration on the lower wrapper that matches that figure's accomplishments. For example, industrialist Andrew Carnegie has a coal worker shoveling coal on his lower wrapper, while Edgar Allan Poe has a raven perched atop a pile of books on his lower wrapper. Explorer and hunter Henry M. Stanley has an African woman's bust inside a map of Africa on his lower wrapper. Other prominent figures run the gamut from actors (Edwin Booth, Sarah Bernhardt), to writers and poets (Tennyson, Irving), to businessmen (Vanderbilt), engineers and inventors (James B. Eads, Mary Anderson), and politicians (William Henry Harrison). There is even one child, the musical prodigy Josef Hoffman. Fine. Some lightly rubbed.
Price: $3,500.00
Item #22100553