City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)
The Blue Flower
New York: Scribner, 1902

Blue, green, and gloss and matte gold on dark blue cloth.

As Armstrong designed bindings for Scribner over the years, her work became featured in several series of popular authors. One of these authors was Henry Van Dyke. Armstrong’s covers for Van Dyke’s books are known as her blue cloth series. Armstrong designed twelve covers for Van Dyke between 1901 and 1927. Her book covers became so synonymous with this popular fiction that Scribner eventually hired other book designers to continue Armstrong’s style after Armstrong moved away from binding design and declined to continue work on the series.