Four vintage book covers featuring illustrations of women

Hello bibliophiles! For your Friday viewing pleasure, here is a foursome of vintage book covers featuring women.

Betty Gordon at Boarding School

This juvenile fiction title was written by Alice B. Emerson, which was one of the pseudonyms used by Stratemeyer Syndicate. It was published in 1921 and the full title is Betty Gordon at Boarding School or The Treasure of Indian Chasm.

Previous owners of this volume include Marion Brougher and Janet Brougher of Wellsville, Pennsylvania, and John Brake of Greenville, Virginia.

And, just so you don't get too nostalgic on this Friday morning in September, here is the very unfortunate opening paragraph of the book:

"Me make you velly nice apple tart, Miss Betty." The Chinese cook flourished his rolling pin with one hand and swung his apron viciously with the other as he held open the screen door and swept out some imaginary flies.

Kathleen's Diamonds

This paperback volume was written by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller and was published by The Arthur Westbrook Company of Cleveland, Ohio. It is copyright 1891, but, according to a couple different sources, I think these books were actually published as cheap reprints between 1909 and 1929. (Read more at American Women's Dime Novel Project.)

The full title is Kathleen's Diamonds or She Loved a Handsome Actor.

It is No. 45 of at least 132 in The Hart Series. Other titles include A Handsome Engineer's Flirtation, A Fatal Elopement, The Mystery of Suicide Place, The Curse of Pocahontas and Daintie's Cruel Rivals.

Grace Harlowe with the Red Cross in France

Hey, it's Grace Harlowe again. This is the third one of the book covers from this series that has been featured on Papergreat. (See the posts of July 8, 2012, and August 8, 2012, for the others.)

The copyright date of the book is 1920, and it was written by Jessie Graham Flower, which was a pseudonym.

The Secret of the Sundial

And here's the colorful (and well-worn) dust jacket of The Secret of the Sundial by Ann Wirt. The book is copyright 1932 by The Goldsmith Publishing Company of Chicago and is part of The Madge Sterling Series.

Wirt is one the pen names that was used by prolific author Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson (1905-2002), who is most notable for writing many of the Nancy Drew books under another pseudonym -- Carolyn Keene.

Here's something spooky, though. I did not open this book before I picked it off the shelf to write about it this morning. Check out the opening passage:

On a certain evening in early September — Friday the thirteenth — to be exact, a stranger in Claymore, Michigan, might have been startled to behold two figures, grotesque in long white sheets which draped them from head to foot, scurrying along an alley leading to Summit Street. It was an appropriate night for ghosts to be abroad. The moon was in the dark and the wind whistled weirdly through the trees.

Today, of course, is a Friday the 13th in early September.

Spooky, indeed.

Finally, here's what these four books look like, side-by-side, on a bookshelf.