Browse Items (42 total)

Very quickly in the life of the British literary annuals, the 300-pages of 10-12 engravings and 30-40 literary contributions became more and more ornate, like this embossed inscription plate. When present, the dedication page replicates supplications…

The first British literary annuals were originally published in small octavo and duodecimo sizes with glazed paper boards and a slipcase usually bearing the same image

Originally published in paper boards from 1823-26, the annuals were bound in a variety of styles; eventually the bindings moved to the ever popular leather. Alaric Watts’ Literary Souvenir was one of the few to be delivered to the bookseller already…

Both Friendship’s Offering and the Forget Me Not were originally published with paper boards and were perhaps perceived as more ephemeral than the Keepsake, published with silk-covered boards, or The Literary Souvenir, published in leather or cloth…

Ackermann also attributes his literary annual form to an earlier almanac, Almanach des Muses, published in France 1765 through 1833. The original covers are flimsy paper with no board for support; the 1767 and 1781 volumes contain only one engraving,…

The1781 volume of the Almanach des Muses opens its pages with a calendar, lunar phases, important dates, and then begins paginating 300 pages of fugitive verses. (from Harris' Forget Me Not: The Rise of the British Literary Annual)

Though British almanacs represent much of the format of RudolphAckermann's and other publishers' initial forays into the literary annual, Ackermann and his editor Frederic Shoberl credit the French for the development of the annual. In the 1823…

Simpson's Gentleman’s Almanack and Pocket Journal for 1816, a Stationers' Company publication, acts as a reference for its business-minded male readers, not a workbook of mathematical problems, as is indicated by its Contents page. With its charts,…

With Simpson’s almanac, its ruled pages invite the user not only to reference the information but also to record data himself much like the 1824 and 1825 volumes of Friendship’s Offering, another very successful literary annual. The ruled pages are…

In this volume, readers are allowed the luxury of only one completely blank leaf (recto and verso) on which to write. This particular one shilling three pence almanac was published by Longman, Hurst, a publishing house that would split into two…