Victorian Illustrations

There was a lovely series of books published around 1912-1915 that are known as the Mary Frances books, written by Jane Eayre Fryer.  Larry found three of them on Internet Archives and I'm totally enthralled!  The story lines are sweet, and an attentive kid could learn to sew or garden or even grasp the fundamentals of cooking if s/he had a copy of the books, but what delights me are the beautiful drawings and (my) ability to screen capture...lol

        Just LOOK how beautiful they are ( flower panels in particular). The garden book illustrator was William F. Zwirner, while Jane Allen Boyer did the sewing book and most of the cooking book (with Margaret G. Hays).

BTW, the bird above is a 'sewing bird' which I'd never heard of before.  Evidently, it was a Victorian  gadget that held the other end of your sewing project.  ►This pic shows it better--pushing down on the tail opened the beak.  It was also called a third hand, and was especially useful when hand sewing a hem or running stitch. (See? Ya learn something every day).

This is a collage of some of the dolly illustrations in the sewing book....

                      ...and these drawings were a few of the pictures of Mary Frances herself.

 You realize you should watch for more of these fillers here on HH, right?  Good ☺

Thanks for the gift, Larry!