The Biography of Our Baby

New York: Dodge Publishing Company, 1906. Hardcover. Very good. Bessie Collins Pease. [63.]. 17 cm. 20 colour illustrations. Pink cloth hardcover with gold and red impressing. A little soiling. Ink inscription on back of frontispiece. Thumb mark on page 51. A bit of label residue on rear pastedown.

This vintage (and unused) baby book is filled with verses by Edmund Vance Cooke, popularly known as "the poet laureate of childhood," born on June 5, 1866, in Port Dover, Ontario. What makes the book stand out, however, are the cute and colourful illustrations by Bessie Pease Gutmann (1876–1960), an American artist and illustrator most noted for her paintings of cherubs, infants and young children. During the early 1900s Gutmann was considered one of the better-known magazine and book illustrators in the United States.