Jacob Abbott Describes "The Harper Establishment" Book Production and Warehouse Facility

In 1855 Jacob Abbott, author of books for young people, issued an illustrated account of the new Harper & Brothers publishing facility in New York entitled The Harper Establishment, or How the Story Books are Made. This facility the Harpers had constructed after a huge fire on December 10, 1853 destroyed their previous premises. Abbott's book was issued by Harper as volume 4 of the Harper's Story Books. A Series of Narratives, Dialogues, Biographies, and Tales for the instruction and Entertainment of the Young. Even though it was written for a youthful readership, Abbott's book remains perhaps the most detailed illustrated account of book production in America during the mid-nineteenth century. Other aspects show customers visiting the large new "fireproof" establishment, which also served as a retail facility. Bookbinding processes, which at this time remained mostly a hand process, are also featured, including the processes of marbling paper. Harpers were proud of introducing the best and most advanced book production processes. Notably on p. 120 Abbott's book shows their power press room with the presses operated by women and men.

What Abbott seems to have deliberately excluded from his book was discussion of the large circulation Harper's New Monthly Magazine that the firm had launched in 1850. That magazine was, of course, intended for an adult readership. By 1855 its circulation was 50,000 copies, requiring production facilities different from books which typically were issued in only a thousand or a few thousand copies at a time.