Browse Items (42 total)

This first Forget Me Not volume introduces a much more intricate steel-plate engraving, Madonna, engraved by John Samuel Agar. This frontispiece sets the tone for Ackermann’s experiment by presenting an image of the Madonna “from a painting by…

The first literary annual that was profoundly successful was published in green paper boards with ornate designs on that cover and its slipcase as well as gild edges on the paper. Published in a duodecimo (small) format, the engravings and literary…

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,…

The Bengal Annual (1830-1837) was the only British literary annual produced and published in Calcutta, India, extending the boundaries of home to Britain’s colonial empire by including both British and Indian authors, despite the editor articulating…

The Ladies Diary, published 1704-1840, eschewed astrology and prediction for mathematical problems, typically including enigmas, queries, and the answers to the previous year's questions. On the final pages of the 1768, 1821, and 1822 Diary, the…

Though Ackermann emigrated to London in the 1780s and became a naturalized citizen in 1809, he never cut ties with her German roots. Ackermann admittedly borrowed from the German tradition of the “Taschenbuch,” or pocket-book, “a small book, adapted…

The Oriental Annual (published 1834-1840), in contrast to The Bengal Annual, was published in London and filled with steel plate engravings of various scenes in India and ekphrastic poetry and prose to accompany those images. The stamped leather…

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…

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)