Gift book

Gift books, or literary annuals, first appeared in England. "The Forget Me Not", subtitled "a Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1823", was published in November, 1822 and was believed to be the first example. 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.cite web |url=http://www.fsu.edu/~speccoll/giftbooks.htm |title=Special Collections at FSU |work=Gift Books, Literary Annuals |accessmonthday=April 13 |accessyear=2008]

Editors

Gift books 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 cite web|url=http://www.aol.bartleby.com/226/1115.html|work=The Cambridge History Of English And American Literature chapter 20 |title=Bartlebys.com|accessdate=2008-04-15] . They were often printed with the date of the coming new year, but copyrighted with the actual year of publication. [cite book | title=Iconotropism: Turning Toward Pictures | last=Spolsky | first=Ellen | publisher=Bucknell University Press | location=New Jersey | edition=Hardcover ed. | date=2004 | id=ISBN:0838755429 (page 201)] 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. cite web |url=http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_Library/collections/harris/giftbooks.html |title=The Harris Collection Of American Poetry and Plays|work=Gift Books and Annuals |accessmonthday=April 13 |accessyear=2008]

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. cite web |url=http://www.americanantiquarian.org/annuals.htm |title=American Antiquarian Society |work=Literary Annuals |accessmonthday=April 12 |accessyear=2004]

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.

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; most were no longer being published by the late 1800s.

References

External links

* [http://www.aol.bartleby.com/226/index.html#11 The Cambridge History Of English And American Literature] , chapter 20