Six stereoviews comprise this lot of literary portrait subjects, spanning the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth. Publishers represented include Keystone View Company, Meadville, Pennsylvania, and Smith and Singles, Cooperstown, New York, with the latter issuing the earliest card in the group on a green-bordered mount. Subjects are identified by printed captions on the card faces and reverses.
The Smith and Singles card bears the printed caption "J. Fenimore Cooper" and presents an oval vignette portrait of an elderly man in a dark coat and cravat. The two Keystone cards identify George Bernard Shaw standing on a ship deck in a suit and holding a hat, and Lowell Thomas seated at a table in a dark suit with a bow tie. A fourth Keystone card shows a man in a white linen suit and straw hat seated at close range. The upper left card depicts an older bearded man seated near a train window with dishes visible on the surface beside him.
James Fenimore Cooper, the American novelist best known for the Leatherstocking Tales, died in 1851, making the Smith and Singles card a posthumous portrait reproduction. George Bernard Shaw's caption reads "on a visit to the Hawaiian Islands," and Lowell Thomas is identified as "Lecturer and Author" on card number 32812.
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