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Cover Design for The One Hoss Shay

Date1892

Illustration CitationThe One Hoss Shay with its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet and The Broomstick Train, by Oliver Wendell Holmes (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892). Not published

MediumInk, watercolor, and gouache on illustration board

Dimensionscomposition: 7 15/16 × 5 15/16 in. (20.2 × 15.1 cm)
sheet: 11 1/2 × 8 3/4 in. (29.2 × 22.2 cm)

Credit LineGift of Gertrude Brincklé, 1945

Object number1945-18

On View

Not on view

Label TextOliver Wendell Holmes was well known not just as a professor anatomy at Harvard but also as an author of light verse. The One Hoss Shay tells of a one hundred year old horse-drawn carriage that suddenly breaks down.

Howard Pyle proposed this drawing as a study for the book's cover and added annotations relating to colors and lettering. He gave the image a classical air with the traditional lyre and mask of comedy, a scroll-like title banner, and lettering similar to that on ancient momuments.

The publishers did not use Pyle's drawing; they chose the simpler cover at right by an unknown designer.