Browse Items (14 total)

For this first volume, Ackermann used only one engraver, John Samuel Agar, to create both the steel plate frontispiece engraving and the monthly wood-cut engravings of Twelve Months that are the focus of this first volume. Though Rudolph Ackermann's…

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…

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…

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

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…

One of the alterations popularized by the Literary Souvenir mimicked elements of the “album” genre. The Literary Souvenir included printed facsimiles of authors’ signatures in the last three to six pages of the book. Though the autographs are…

In order to attract their readers, publishers paid exorbitant prices to “borrow” original paintings and have them rendered as engravings. A single portrait required anywhere between twenty and two hundred guineas for borrowing fees and up to two…

The neo-classical embellishments adorning early annuals' covers and slipcases remind readers of the three graces: charm, beauty, and literature. Ackermann, with this final marker of the literary annual, focuses on establishing the literary annual in…

Though the paper size evolves through the life of most literary annuals, the printed space, the printing plate, remains octavo and the page begins to incorporate large margins around the text blocks in 1825 with The Literary Souvenir. This was done…