What do a fictional detective and three very real women of mid-nineteenth century Salem have in common? Well, books have been written about them, and in certain editions of these books there are silhouette endpapers. That’s it, that’s the post. Well not really, there’s a bit more I want to say but mostly I want to show. When I was a girl my very favorite books after my Black Beauty and Little House on the Prairie phases were Nancy Drew mysteries. I had a whole bunch and always wanted more. Most of my Nancy Drews were later editions—1960s and 1970s I think—and they weren’t great- looking books to tell you the truth. Nancy was on the cover, in whatever setting she was dealing with in that volume, and inside were some boring oval portraits. So I didn’t really think about the books at all, just Nancy. Then someone gave me an older book, it must have been one of the first editions of the series, and inside were these amazing endpapers of orange silhouettes! I remember distinctly thinking at the time, wow, older is better, older is (more vivid, more creative, more rare, more CRAFTED) better. So then I wanted more older Nancy Drews, of course, Nancy Drew BOOKS, not just Nancy Drews. I had also become more concious of what a book was as an object, or I should say simply conscious. So I sought out the orange silhouette endpapers (and found some more red than orange), then black ones, which came a bit later, and then finally “the diggger” depictions which are not quite silhouettes but still cool.
My Nancy Drew endpaper obsession continued on for quite some time, but I progressed to other books, including Louise Hall Tharp’s Peabody Sisters of Salem, about Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody of Salem, who had interesting Salem childhoods with their teacher parents and led quite engaging adult lives.. Elizabeth was an early childhood education pioneer and Transcendentalist, Mary was also very focused on educational reform, and wrote several books, though she is perhaps best known as the second wife of the “father of public education” Horace Mann. Sophia was an artist before her marriage to her fellow Salemite Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Sophia always seemed like the least interesting of the three sisters to me, but as she was married to Hawthorne she gets more attention). A more scholarly book on the Peabody sisters was published by Megan Marshall in 2005, but my heart belongs to the Tharp book, which I read and reread as a teenager. I was captivated by her ability to capture the sisters’ world (s), and I’ve always had a rather undistinguished copy in my bedside bookshelf. But last month, I came across a special sleeved 1980 Book of the Month Club/The American Past edition online, and promptly purchased it (books in sleeves are always a treat). When it arrived, I was thrilled to see its beautiful Salem-silhouette cover, but inside, a big surprise: endpaper silhouettes of the entire Peabody family! Apparently these are from a selection of “Dr. Nathaniel Peabody & Family. Profiles drawn from life Nov. 8, 1835” in the collection of the former Essex Institute/current Peabody Essex Museum. I just love them: a special summer surprise.
