The Collection
These charming publications flourished in England and America from the 1820s through the 1850s, reaching their peak in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Usually issued at Christmas and intended as a “Christmas, New-Year’s and Birthday present,” gift books were elegantly produced and included short stories, poems, essays, and were often illustrated with colored plates. Many of the best-known writers of the day contributed to them, and in their pages may be found first printings of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many others. The Harris Collection holds copies of approximately 94 percent of the gift books published in the United States.
In evaluating the literary and artistic worth of the gift book, bibliographer Frederick Faxon noted:
“The literature of the “gift books” was remarkable for its freedom from the slightest taint of impropriety. There was never a contribution that savored of the lack of refinement. These volumes were intended as gifts, and were such that they might ornament the drawing-room table of the most fastidious without offense either to mind or eye.” (p. xxi)
Gift books are further notable in that many of the most popular and well-known were edited by women. Alice and Phoebe Cary edited The Josephine Gallery (1859), and Lydia Maria Child edited Looking Towards Sunset (1865) and The Oasis (1834). Sarah Josepha Hale (of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” fame) edited The Opal in 1845, 1848, and 1849. Lydia Sigourney edited the Religious Souvenir in 1839 and 1840. Emily Percival edited Gems of Beauty each year from 1849 to 1855. Sarah C. Edgarton Mayo edited The Rose or Sharon from 1840 to 1849; from then until 1857 it was edited by Caroline M. Sawyer.
See also:
» Nineteenth-Century Literature
» Women’s Writings
Related Collections
The Manuscript Collections hold numerous commonplace books of the 19th century. These works, composed of copied-out verse and aphorisms, interspersed with pasted-in clippings, autographs, dried flowers, and the like, have many similarities to the gift books, and may usefully be studied in conjunction with each other.
Essential References
Faxon, Frederick W.
Literary annuals and gift books; a bibliography 1823-1903
[1st ed.] reprinted
[Pinner, Middlesex] Private Libraries Association, 1973
Felmingham, Michael
The illustrated gift book, 1880-1930: with a checklist of 2500 titles
Aldershot [Hants, England]: Scolar Press, 1988
Kirkham, Edwin Bruce
Indices to American literary annuals and gift books, 1825-1865 / compiled by E. Bruce Kirkham and John W. Fink
New Haven, Conn.: Research Publications, 1975
Thompson, Amy Adwyna
An examination of the gift-books and annuals in the Harris Collection of Brown University
[Providence, R.I.] 1931
Thompson, Ralph
American literary annuals & gift books, 1825-1865
New York, The H. W. Wilson company, 1936