Patent/quack medicine vendors were geniuses at marketing and advertising. Among their many venues were newspapers (especially), almanacs (examples from previous posts here and here), revenue stamps (examples from previous post here), trading cards (examples coming!), and other "swag." Among the other items were books: coloring books, recipe books, history books (example from previous post here), and, well...just "books."I've posted before on the Lincoln Proprietary Company and their products Lincoln Tea and Lincoln Sexual Pills (previous posts here and here).
The company took advantage of their namesake to publish several editions of a book entitled Humorous and Pathetic Tales of Abraham Lincoln. The book - e than 90 pages long - went through several editions. It seems to have been published as early as 1894 and as late as the 1910s (or later).
The item I have in my collection is "Fifth Edition - Second Series" but with no copyright or printing date:
The first - and main - part of the book, about 80 pages, contains dozens of short anecdotes about Lincoln...the enticing theing is that the book bills them as "Many Heretofore Unpublished" (thus the title of this post!).
The second part of the book - and what patent medicine swag would be without this(?!) - is advertisments and testimonials for the Lincoln Tea Company products, about 12 pages worth.
The last part of the book comprises about six woodcuts of various Lincoln-related scenes and persons.
You can read the full text of the book at the Internet Archive
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