The Garden of Allah  
by Robert Hichens
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company
(January) 1905, 19.5 x 13 cm.
[signed H, likely Frederick Garrison Hall]

Red cloth stamped in brown and gold. Front cover: Two camels, one with rider, and two pedestrians in brown, on brown outline pedestal enclosing gold title. Spine has figure of musician in brown. (reference copy with pigment gone from title on spine). This design was used in many variants for over 30 years on Grosset & Dunlap reprints.

It's difficult to assign accurate dates to the Grosset & Dunlap editions, as they all have no title page date and Copyright, 1904 on the back of the tp. Each edition, however, has a booklist in the back, and by looking up the editions advertised, we can ascertain an approximate date. The dust jackets also have booklists, and they may be updated more often than the lists in the books. Thus we know that DJ 1 below is after 1909 from the other titles on the jacket, DJ 2 is after 1913, and DJ 3 we can place after 1926, as it is the photoplay DJ of that year's film. But we have no guarantee that the DJ's that come from a dealer were originally on the copy of the book they arrive with. Several of these editions, including the 1926 photoplay, were listed in the dealer's catalogue as 1904 editions, because of the copyright date, though that is clearly impossible. 

Above center: 1907 (?) Grosset and Dunlap edition (based on latest title advertised in back).  Beige cloth with black titles, brown images and border. 

Above right: 1909 (?) Grosset and Dunlap edition (based on latest title advertised in back).  Tan cloth with midnight blue titles, dark burgundy images and border. 

Above Left: 1910 (?) G&D edition (based on latest title advertised in back) in blue-gray cloth with dark blue title and dark maroon images and border. This arrived in dust jacket 1 below. 

Above Center: 1910 (?) G&D edition (based on latest title advertised in back) in blue-gray cloth with dark blue title and dark maroon images and border. This arrived in dust jacket 2 below (1912-1916 ?). Note that the type on the cover is slightly bolder and not as crisp compared to the previous copy.

Above right: 1927 G&D Rex Ingram Photoplay edition in green cloth with black title, images and border. This configuration was also used on the 1916 Selig Polyscope Photoplay edition. This copy arrived in dust jacket 3 below.

Below: DJ 2 came on an uninscribed copy similar to the binding and text block of the DJ 1 copy. But DJ 2 has characters on it that appear identical to those in the 1916 film (see photos from the Selig photoplay edition below) but the latest book advertised is 1913. The illustration is signed While/N.Y. v

	In 1916 (this copy has an advertisement for Booth Tarkington's Seventeen, which was issued in 1916) Grosset & Dunlap issued a "Photoplay" edition that included illustrations that were stills from the first (Selig Polyscope) silent film version starring Helen Ware, Thomas Santchi, A.W. Filson and Eugenie Besserer, with a dust jacket that was illustrated with a painting based on the movie. As you can see from the stills reproduced in the book, the cover includes characters identical to the actors in the movie.

So the DJ that came on the other (undated, uninscribed, not illustrated) copy is likely to have been issued after 1916. It does not say "photoplay" anywhere on the DJ, so that image may have been used on other trade editions, but I have also seen a copy of the Selig photoplay edition for sale with this exact DJ. One would expect editions after 1913 to be listed on it, but in 1916 we were in the middle of a World War.  Could this artwork have been done from movie stills made before the film was released?  It's also possible that during the war a new image for this title was added to a "stock" dj due to rationing shortages, and that this was then used to wrap books in inventory to make them appear up-to-date.

Below: DJ 3 came on the green 1927 G&D Photoplay edition, with stills from the 1926 MGM silent film directed by Rex Ingram, starring Ingram's wife Alice Terry and Ivan Petrovich. It is also interesting because the back panel lists only photoplay editions. 

The famous 1936 Technicolor film of this story, starring Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer, was also issued as a G&D photoplay edition with a new DJ and the same stamping on the cloth cover, this time in red cloth with black lettering and images, but without the line border, making it similar to the 1905 Stokes copy, but without the gold title. The endpapers are stills from the film.

This collection includes all the copies illustrated above, including the 1936 version, although it is outside the collection's time frame of 1872-1929. 

Click to view the online exhibition preview of American Decorated Publishers' Bindings, 1872-1929
or go to the preliminary checklist of the collection