End-Paper Advertising.

This article provides information on the concept of end-paper advertising. In the present century there have been many ingenious developments; but to study the phenomenon of end-paper advertising at its most memorable one may well confine the investigations to the high Victorian era and the years before the First World War. Before proceeding, however, it is necessary to remark that there have been important business organizations not primarily engaged in publishing which have used books as a means of drawing attention to vendible commodities of a non-literary nature. These include Lever Brothers of Port Sunlight, and Boots Cash Chemists, the Nottingham-based pharmaceutical company. There were two sides to Jesse Boot's incursions into publishing. From a study of end-paper advertising one can gain some insight into a number of related phenomena. Perhaps the first thing to strike anyone who looks into this matter is the astonishing number of reputable publishing concerns often capable of producing very high quality work, which have been almost entirely forgotten.