Those Marbeau Cousins

The Marbeau Cousins was published by Rand McNally in 1898, and W. W. Denslow's cover for this title went through quite a few changes in color and design. I recently picked up another copy of the book, but I doubt I'll ever have all the variations!

 The original edition had a wraparound cover design. The cover fabric on my copy is a putty/tan color, but there do seem to be other colors. Denslow's seahorse is visible between two of the crows.

This copy has changed to cover and spine only, and a reduced size which resulted in one crow losing his tail! As usual, Denslow's seahorse has vanished from the cover. The cover does still use gilt for the title and author. A version also exists with white lettering rather than gold. There's no indication of when these changes occurred.

The simplest of the batch is this version, which keeps only the lettering and three of the birds. I have seen copies of this binding using white lettering and the pictorial spine design, but this is an even simpler one-color stamping. This copy does have a 1914 inscription, which might indicate when it was published.

It's endless!