COVE

    Imagine you are pilfering through the shelves of a used book store, examining the vintage texts and come across a strangely textured paperback titled, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (Image 1). The cover is warped, almost as if it had been dropped in a mysterious liquid and then dried in the sun, and it feels like it would snap right in half if you bent it. The title is unfamiliar and there is no other information on the thin spine or back, and when you open the book to look for clues as to the origin of this strange copy, you see the only publication info (Image 2) as a “R. F. Fenno & Co., 18 East 17 St New York.” The sparse illustrations that appear in the front and end matter, which appear to be generic ornaments, have no listed illustrator. Upon Googling said publisher, the first result is an Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia that features a page on the publisher. The usual character, Wikiapedia, has no results. Which leaves you with only one question: Who is R.F. Fenno & Co.?

    R.F. Fenno & Co. was a publisher based in New York founded in 1885 by Robert F. Fenno, according to the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia (Image 3). The company was then in financial trouble and was managed by creditors from 1903 to 1905. Fenno ended up retiring from the company in 1929, and was continued under a new name of Diehl, Landau, and Pettit. This sparse information is the most easily accessible description of the history of this publisher available online and other mentions of R. F. Fenno seems to source this page, which itself has no source for its information. Upon searching for Diehl, Landau, and Pettit, the same Arthur Conan Doyle page appears. After doing a bit more Google digging, one is able to find an old web archive project about a book titled Lucile (Image 4), which was run by Sid Huttner, a Senior Librarian at the Special Collections department at The University of Iowa Libraries. Fenno appears to have published an edition of Lucile, which is why a page appears on the publisher. This page appears to be the actual source of the ACD Encyclopedia’s information on R. F. Fenno & Co. as it features an actual quotation from a source, cited as “(DLB 49:163).” DLB stands for Dictionary of Literary Biography, which were volumes dedicated to tracking the history of publishing, with edition 49 specifically focusing on American publishing houses. No online edition of this book exists that I could gain access to unfortunately. It also mentions an obituary of Robert F. Fenno appeared in Publishers’ Weekly volume 132, but this does not seem to be archived digitally that I could find. Searching for Robert F. Fenno, brings up a Wikipedia page on Richard Fenno, who has no clear relation to Robert Fenno.

It doesn't even appear to be the case that R. F. Fenno & Co. was such a small publisher that no history would be recorded, searching for the publisher on WorldCat provides over 1300 title results. This indicates that there is quite a number of books and different editions published by Fenno & Co., making the lack of information about the company or the people involved even more puzzling. While it does appear that the Dictionary of Literary Biography has actual details on the publisher, it is still strange how little internet presence exists. But what can be gathered from the Lucile page is that R. F. Fenno mainly published reprinted editions of classics as well as new titles, and published them in either cloth (publishing term for hardcover) or paperback. This information tracks with the books that are available online. It is fuzzy how successful or unsuccessful R. F. Fenno & Co. was, while it is stated it underwent financial hardship from 1903-05, R. F. Fenno & Co. went on until 1929 until it was renamed. It also seems that Diehl, Landau, and Pettit then Landau Book Company were not as successful, as even less appears about them online and much fewer book results appear.

Which leads to the strange version of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. This, admittedly rather ugly and weird, version of the Rubáiyát is not the only edition of the Rubáiyát that R. F. Fenno & Co. published. Actually, a much more standard gift-book edition exists that features many of the similar trappings as other Rubáiyát editions, such as generic “Eastern” illustrations (Image 7) and depictions of Persian culture done by Gilbert James. What is notably missing is the more custom and illustrative typography of the title from the frontmatter (Image 6 and 8), which indicates that the strange edition version was published more recently than the edition with Gilbert James. Another interesting component of the strange edition is art on the cover. The image of a window is strangely unrelated to the Rubáiyát, and what is more interesting is that R. F. Fenno & Co. had published another edition with a cover specially designed by the artist William Stark Weather (Image 9), who illustrated many of R. F. Fenno & Co. 's cloth titles from 1892 to 1918 and did interior work such as the decorative border that appears in the text.

The conclusions that can be drawn about this strange edition have to make certain guesses and leaps. It appears that the front matter of this edition was printed sometime from 1900 to 1920, with the actual plates of the text (bibliographic information on Fitzgerald and Khayyám and the poem itself) being from sometime after 1888. This is indicated by the difference in print quality, and how the poem itself has quite a poor print job. Why this edition in particular features the custom typography for the title and no other relevant graphic elements is a mystery. It does appear that R. F. Fenno at one point had access to more traditional Rubáiyát imagery, but perhaps lost the license or the ability to pay the artists, namely William Stark Weather and Gilbert James. Where the ornaments from the interior come from, or who designed the cover of this edition is a complete mystery. My guess would be that this giftbook edition was thrown together at some point, perhaps during the financial crisis between 1903 to 1905, with whatever plates and elements that they had available to do for as cheaply as possible. The price point that this edition would have been sold at as well is unclear, but it being a paperback edition indicates it was on the lower end scale. 

Citations:

Huttner, Sidney F. “Index to Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 49 Parts I and II.” The LUCILE Project , 3 Aug. 2010, sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/lucile/DLB49Index.htm.

“R. F. Fenno & Co.” The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/R._F._Fenno_%26_Co. Accessed 28 May 2023.

“Starkweather Illustrations.” William Starkweather, www.williamstarkweather.com/id5.html. Accessed 29 May 2023.