Gift book

Cover for The Liberty Bell, 1848

Gift books, literary annuals or a keepsake, were 19th century books, often lavishly decorated, which collected essays, short fiction, and poetry. They were primarily published in the autumn, in time for the holiday season and were intended to be given away rather than read by the purchaser. They were often printed with the date of the coming new year, but copyrighted with the actual year of publication.

History

Gift books first appeared in England in the 1820s. They were modelled after the long-established literary almanacs published in France and Germany such as the Almanach des Muses (1765–1833) and Schiller's Musen-Almanach (1796–1800), but lacked some of the critical prestige of their Continental counterparts. The first known example is Rudolph Ackermann's Forget Me Not, subtitled a Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1823, published in November 1822. It was decoratively bound and came in a slipcase. It was successful, and by 1832 there were sixty-three different annual gift books being published in England. In 1826, The Atlantic Souvenir was the first American annual published.

Many gift books were among the first periodicals to pay contributors and editors regularly. This was a draw to many writers, many of whom tailored their work to suit the readers of these types of publications.

Some of the more important annuals of the time were the Opal, Talisman, the Magnolia, the Gift, the Liberty Bell (an abolitionist work) and the Token. The era of the gift book did not outlast the 19th century; in England most ceased publication before 1860.

These "gift" books were refered to "The Annuals" in England and almost all contained "steel engraved" illustration which was new technology ~1820 which allowed mass production. The "Annuals" can be regarded as a long running fad. In the 1830s you see a sarcastic poem about the Annuals by Thomas Hood (The Battle of the Annuals). Watercolor became popular in the 1830s, and the black and white etchings allowed many people to produce great wall art with a little skill using these book plates, and this gave more legs to the fad. In 1842, Volume 1, page 521 of the Illustrated London News there are sarcastic pictures poking fun at the annuals. In 1844 there was an article referring to it as imbicilic mania, and finally the Obituary for the Annual, appeared in the Art Journal of 1857.
The span of "The Annuals" fad matches the new illustration technology of the steel plate etchings, steel etchings allowed mass produced books to be produced cheaply. Steel plate etchings were very expensive, but allowed for a greater quality of impressions (currently steel plate etching is only used for currency).

Editors

Many of the most popular and well-known gift books were edited by women, including Sarah Josepha Hale, Maria Weston Chapman, Lydia Maria Child, Alice and Phoebe Cary, and Lydia Sigourney. The annual The Token, which began in 1828 and lasted fifteen years, was edited by Samuel Griswold Goodrich. Because of the prevalence and popularity of gift books, he referred to the time period as the "Age of Annuals".

Features

The material included in the books tended to be entirely "proper" prose and poetry, usually of a sentimental or religious nature, often by well known authors of the day such as (in England) Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Robert Southey, Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and Robert Browning, and (in America) authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frances S. Osgood, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A notable feature of gift books were their decorative aspect. They featured increasingly lavish bindings, ranging from glazed paper to embossed silk or embossed and inlaid leather with mother of pearl. Their size increased over time as well as their interior decoration. Pages often featured flowery borders, and the books were copiously illustrated with engravings or colored plates. A inscription plate was often included for the gift giver to inscribe to the recipient.

The material included was usually original but sometimes in the cheaper volumes may have been reprinted. Usually the books included the year in the title but in some cases, this was omitted, and the publisher would sell the volume's remainders the next year. In some cases an old annual would be reprinted with a new name, or with just the lead article and some illustration plates changed, or even renamed using a more popular name from a rival publisher. These practices sometimes make it difficult to construct correct bibliographies, and may have been one reason why "the whole tribe of annuals fell into something of disrepute."

Illustrators

Artists whose work illustrated these volumes included William Turner, Edwin Henry Landseer, Charles Lock Eastlake, John Cheney, and John Sartain. Many of the illustrations reproduced works by European artists of the Renaissance and later eras and served to make the works of these artists known to a much wider audience.

External links

• The Cambridge History Of English And American Literature, chapter 20