Green, Olive [pseudonym for Myrtle Reed].

Putnam’s Homemaker Series. [10 volumes:] What to Have for Breakfast, Everyday Luncheons, One Thousand Simple Soups, How to Cook Shell-Fish, How to Cook Fish, How to Cook Meat and Poultry, How to Cook Vegetables; One Thousand Salads, Everyday Desserts, [and] Everyday Dinners. By Olive Green.

New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1905-1911. Volumes three through six are first editions, the rest are early reprints. First six volumes are in the original printed dustjackets (four complete, one with jacket rear panel missing, one with parts of spine missing). A very good, very clean set. Uniform blue gingham with color-printed paper labels to front covers and spines. Top edges gilt. Ten volumes, sixteenmo. Item #17195

Myrtle Reed (1874 – 1911) was an author and journalist whose prolific output included short stories, poems, an autobiography, and seventeen novels. After high school, Reed became a freelance journalist and writer for magazines. Her poetry, stories, and sketches appeared in periodicals like Bookman, Munsey’s, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, The Critic, and many others. Reed’s most popular novels were Lavender and Old Lace (1902) and A Weaver of Dreams (1911), both of which were adapted into films. Reed was the daughter of Elizabeth Armstrong Reed (1842 – 1915), an important scholar and author whose university textbooks on South and Southwest Asian history and culture were the only works by a woman accepted by the Philosophical Society of Great Britain. Elizabeth Reed was also the chairman of the Woman’s Congress of Philology and served as the president of the Illinois Women’s Press Association from 1894 to 1896.

Myrtle Reed’s publications frequently appeared in attractive bindings by the important book designer and illustrator Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867 – 1944). A Woman’s Career (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914), which covered women’s employment opportunities, was one such title.

Price: $1,500.00