[ Dick & Fitzgerald]

The Worcester Letter Writer and Book of Business Forms for Ladies and Gentlemen

New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1879. The Worcester Letter Writer and Book of Business Forms for Ladies and Gentlemen (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1879). Illustrated Victorian guide to letter composition and business etiquette, including 270 specimen letters and an appendix of forms for wills, petitions, bills, and receipts. Original decorative paper-covered boards with green cloth spine, 4.5 × 6.75 inches, 216 pages plus publisher’s adverts front and rear on thin, fragile paper.

Condition: Binding sound with moderate shelf wear and rubbing to edges. Boards show age toning and light soil; spine with some darkening. Interior clean, lightly age-toned; several advertisement leaves at front and rear fragile and chipped at margins. Text block complete with no loose pages. A solid and attractive example of a 19th-century publisher’s instructional manual.

Dick & Fitzgerald of New York specialized in practical handbooks and parlor entertainment guides, publishing a wide range of popular manuals on games, etiquette, and speech. 

This Worcester edition combines social letter writing with business instruction, providing model correspondence for every circumstance—from proposals to petitions—and illustrating late 19th-century standards of decorum and style. Its vivid chromolithographed cover and publisher’s extensive catalogue exemplify the accessible, moralizing charm of Victorian self-improvement literature.

Subjects: Letter Writing, Business Forms, Social Etiquette, American Publishing History, 19th-Century Manuals, Victorian Etiquette, Epistolary Instruction.

Item #21180

Price: $45.00