Margaret Neilson Armstrong

Binding by Mrs. William Starr Dana, According to Season , 1902, designed by Margaret Neilson Armstrong.

Monogram MA

Pride of California, Lathyrus Splendens , 1914. Watercolor, original from one of the illustrations in Armstrong's Field Book of Western Wild Flowers . Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection

Margaret Neilson Armstrong , born Margaret Maitland Armstrong (born September 24, 1867 in New York , † July 18, 1944 in New York) was an American artist , graphic artist , botanical illustrator and author . She is best known for her designs for book covers in the Art Nouveau style . She also wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive guide to the wildflowers of the American west. She also wrote detective novels and biographies .

Life

Margaret Neilson Armstrong was born as the daughter of the American diplomat and glass painter Maitland Armstrong and his wife Helen, a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant (1647–1664) and niece of Hamilton Fish . Her six siblings included Helen Maitland Armstrong (1869-1948), who like her father became a glass painter, and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, a magazine editor.

She began her career as a designer in the 1880s, initially working for AC McClurg and later for other publishers. She designed more than 270 book covers and book covers , around half of them for Scribner’s . She designed in the Art Nouveau style and preferred plant-related motifs, strong colors, gold embossing and often slightly asymmetrical designs - an unusual combination that set her apart from her colleagues. Authors for whom she has designed several covers include Frances Hodgson Burnett , Florence L. Barclay , George Washington Cable , Charles Dickens , Paul Laurence Dunbar , Robert Louis Stevenson , Henry van Dyke , and Myrtle Reed . She has been described as "the most prolific and accomplished American book designer of the 1890s and early 1900s," and her work is often compared to that of her contemporary Alice Cordelia Morse .

Your monogram appears on many covers after 1895 as “MA” in capital letters, with the “M” slightly overlapping the “A”.

Armstrong turned away from designing covers around 1913, as dust jackets became more fashionable, and turned to writing his own books. However, her distinctive graphic style was so successful that publishers hired other artists specifically to mimic their designs on covers. Her interest in botany and especially in wild flowers was already evident in her designs. She now traveled and camped through the western United States and Canada from 1911 to 1914 and was one of the first women to reach the bottom of the Grand Canyon . There she discovered several types of flowers that the botanists had not yet identified.

She described these and many other species in her Field Book of Western Wild Flowers (1915). With its 550 illustrations, 48 ​​of which are in color, their Field Book is considered the first comprehensive guide on the subject. She also wrote three critically acclaimed detective novels - Murder in Stained Glass (1939), The Man with No Face (1940), and The Blue Santo Murder Mystery (1941) and two biographies: Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian (1938) and Trelawny: A Man's Life (1940). She also completed her father's memoirs .

Her work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the collection of the New York Botanical Garden , among others .

Covers designed by Margaret Neilson Armstrong:

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Works

• Field Book of Western Wild Flowers (1915)
• Five Generations (1930)
• Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian (1938)
• Murder in Stained Glass (1939)
• Trelawny: A Man's Life (1940)
• The Man With No Face (1940)
• The Blue Santo Murder Mystery (1941)

Web links

Commons : Margaret Neilson Armstrong  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Find Margaret Neilson Armstrong. In: Wikimedia Commons . Accessed January 21, 2020 (English). 
• Margaret Armstrong. In: Beauty for Commerce: Publishers' Bindings, 1830-1910. University of Rochester, Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, accessed January 22, 2020 . 
• Margaret Armstrong Binding Collection. Decorative bindings. In: Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room. The Library of Congress, accessed January 22, 2020 . 
• Margaret Armstrong Decorated Bindings Collection. (No longer available online.) Boston Book Company, archived from the original on June 6, 2018 ; accessed on January 22, 2020 (English). 
• Miriam Irwin Collection of Margaret Armstrong Book Design. University of Cincinnati, accessed January 22, 2020 . 
• Gullens, et al. Margaret Armstrong and American Trade Bindings: with a checklist of her designed bindings and covers , 1991. (Archive.org)
• Renee Roberts: Collecting Fine Bindings and Designs: Margaret Armstrong. In: Rare Book Hub.com. Americana Exchange, Inc., 2004, accessed January 22, 2020 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Crista Martin: "Armstrong, Margaret Neilson (1867-1944)." Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia . Ed. Anne Commire. Vol. 1. Detroit: Yorkin Publications, 2002. 483. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. March 7, 2015.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Gullans, Charles, and John Espey. Margaret Armstrong and American Trade Bindings . Los Angeles: UCLA Library Department of Special Collections, 1991. https://archive.org/details/margaretarmstron00gull/
3. ^ ^{A b} Curtis Evans: "Had I But Known Authors # 2: Margaret Armstrong, HIBK Patrician" . The Passing Tramp (blog), January 28, 2012.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} "Margaret Armstrong Decorated Bindings Collection"
5. ^ ^{A b} Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867-1944). In: Publisher's Bindings Online. The University of Alabama, accessed January 17, 2020 . 
6. ↑ Charles B Gullans; John Jenkins Espey; University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections; Margaret Armstrong Binding Collection (Library of Congress): Margaret Armstrong and American trade bindings: with a checklist of her designed bindings and covers . In: Occasional papers / UCLA, University Research Library, Department of Special Collections . tape 6 . Los Angeles: Department of Special Collections, University Research Library, University of California, 1991, OCLC 704904397 , p. 51 .
7. ↑ The Art of Murder: Murder in Stained Glass (1939), by Margaret Armstrong. In: The Passing Tramp: Wandering through the mystery genre, book by book. 2012-02-06, accessed on January 22, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Pride of California, Lathyrus Splendens. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed January 17, 2020 . 
9. ↑ #HerNaturalHistory Facebook Live. In: facebook. New York Botanical Garden, March 12, 2019, accessed January 17, 2020 . 
10. ^ Esther Jackson: The Life & Works of Margaret Neilson Armstrong. In: nybg.org: Plant Talk. Inside The New York Botanical Garden. March 29, 2019, accessed on January 17, 2020 .