The Phenomenon Of Gift Books And Annuals And How They Influenced The British Literary Scene In The 19th Century.

‘The Annuals are now the only books bought for presents to young ladies in which way poems formerly had their chief vent’- Robert Southey (1828)

The first literary annual in Britain was published by Rudolf Ackermann in late 1822, titled Forget-Me-Not: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1823. The annual was a collection of verse and prose coupled with printed images targeted towards young upper-middle class women. The target audience is made evident even from the title ‘Forget-Me-Not’ with flowers then being stereotypically associated with females, the floral embellishing on the ornate cover of the book further contributing towards the intended readership. In publishing the collection Ackermann was attempting to take advantage of the growing literacy in British cities, as well as the lowering printing costs due to wider circulation of literature at the time and the new steel plate engravings replacing the short-lived copper ones used previously. Literary annuals were essentially a development of commonplace books popular around the renaissance period an eclectic collection of poetry, prose, and images meant to educate and intrigue readers. The Forget-Me-Not gift book saw high profits as it was a gift that indicated culture and status, sparking a trend of literary annuals being published in the 19^th Century. The ornate covers were designed as décor, a lasting consolidation of literature and art that could be displayed like a piece of furniture in a house. However, critically, these gift books were seen as low-culture collections of poems featuring predominately female poets. This indicates a male-dominated literary scene, with many of the poems (even by recognized poets) in gift books seen as ‘lacking intellectual substance but having high moral standards in order to sway women of the day’.[1] Following the success of Forget-Me-Not a number of rival annuals began to be produced, the most notable including The Keepsake and The Literary Souvenir. This essay will examine the selection of poets included in some of the most influential British annuals of the 19^th Century and how their contributions were overshadowed by the aesthetics of the books, as well as the importance of gift books as a vehicle for expressing contemporary social traits and their importance in the literary landscape.

The Keepsake was one of the most popular annuals from the 1800’s, first published by Hurst, Chance & co. in 1828. The 1828 collection included a number of poems by anonymous authors that included Hemans and Shelley, but the 1829 collection showcased some of the most popular poets of the 19^th Century, including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hemans, and Landon. This reveals that contemporary poets were starting to take notice of the commercialization of literature, with publishers beginning to recognize the profitability of gift books and paying substantial fees to see well-known authors appear in their collections. The gift books saw massive sales as they boomed in popularity from 1823 until they virtually disappeared after the 1850’s. Members of society were drawn to the elegance of the writing and the looks of the annual, with the new steel plate engravings merging art and literature. Many of the poems in Keepsake were written to accompany the engravings, which often depicted maternal or romantic scenes. In time, the books became merited for their aesthetics over than the qualities of the poems included within. In George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’, the annual is mentioned and the narrator focuses not on the literary qualities but on the appearance of the book, saying:

He had brought the last Keepsake, the gorgeous watered-silk publication which marked modern progress at that time and he considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic verses and capital and sentimental stories as interesting… Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses"__the very thing to please a nice girl.[2]

That Wordsworth and Coleridge, two of the most recognized male poets of the time, contributed to the annual and yet it was recognized more for the images and ‘capital stories’ shows that the intended readership were not focused on the intellectual content of the collection. Wordsworth’s contribution came following his criticism of annuals, when he was struggling financially. Although he looked down on the medium, his daughter writing it was ‘degrading enough I confess but necessity has no law’,[3] when he was offered a substantial fee by the editor of Keepsake to produce twelve pages of verse for the annuals he provided- but with only eleven and a half. Following later disagreements, he stated this was as some of his sonnets were rejected.[4] His disdain for annuals as a medium led to difficulties with the editor, but the promised fee led him to work past this to produce a series of poems for the 1829 edition. One of the more recognized poems included was ‘The Country Girl’, which is one of the few poems from annuals still circulated as a single entity. The poem itself was written based on a print provided to Wordsworth, a common practice for the literature that appeared in Keepsake. The fact that ‘it was the eminent poets who had to write for the plates, and not the painters who illustrated the poems’[5] reveals that the engravings were the crux of the annuals rather than the literature itself, diminishing the importance of the verse included and leading a number of leading literary figures to criticize the medium as it limited the creativity of the poets.

Another popular annual from the period was The Literary Souvenir. The title of this piece was chosen to indicate a lasting collection of literature, and the title pages often included prints of high-culture images (see Fig. 1 overleaf). The title page of an annual was important as it revealed the intent of the book, and while many opted for maternal images or beautiful depictions of nature- early editions of The Keepsake including images of powerful women from history and the first edition of Forget Me Not including a famous print of Madonna nursing two children- the 1827 edition of The Literary Souvenir opted to use ancient, cultural images. This could have been to intimate timelessness and the lasting art they intended to include within, and the image of a lute- often associated with the ancient bard- reflects the common notion (amongst the poets themselves at least) from the Romantic period that poets were modern-day bards.

Fig. 1: Engraved title-page for The Literary Souvenir, 1827.

While a number of gift books were criticized for being ‘empty’ annuals, the 1825 publication of The Literary Souvenir received a number of mostly positive reviews from leading periodicals from the time as it strove to deliver powerful literary pieces by popular contemporary poets. The Monthly Review noted that ‘This brilliant literary bouquet contains upwards of 80 original Tales and Poems from the pens of Southey Millman, Coleridge, Campbell, Hemans, Montgomery, Wiffen, Hogg, Galt, Allan Cunningham, Clare, Barton, Bowring’,[6] and was one of the few reviews to note the importance of the annual only for its literary qualities. The British Critic briefly mentioned that leading writers had contributed to the annual, and also that ‘the design is excellent’ and ‘the engraving which accompany [it] are extremely beautiful’.[7] Perhaps the most telling review appeared in The New Monthly Magazine, which stated that ‘We have here a display of genuine taste, an elegant compendium of our passing literary novelties, which no gentleman need be ashamed to place in the hands of a lady on a new year`s day’-[8] reminding us that the positive reviews were on the back of the assertion that the poems were not meant for intellectual stimulation, but rather to please the stereotypical contemporary women reader. The fact that many reviews noted the qualities of the poems were altered by the fact that these annuals were targeted towards women is revealing of an imbalance in gender equality. That The Monthly Review, one of the more popular periodicals of the time, stated in a review of Forget Me Not that ‘the literary department is of a light nature, and precisely calculated for what it was intended__the amusement of the ladies’ shows a social scene dominated by patronizing patrons where female poets and readers were regularly marginalized.[9]

When examining the importance of gift books and annuals, it is crucial to note not just the poems included but also the physical appearance of the book, and more importantly the plates included. The increasing popularity of these annuals coincided with the transition from copper to steel plate printing, as more detailed images were being produced to contribute towards the aesthetics of the annuals. It has been noted that ‘the engraved plates were very often the sole reason for an Annual’s existence’,[10] a notion prevalent in the first annual of Forget-Me-Not. The annual’s central feature were the 12 plates named after each month (see Fig. 2), with short, anonymous poems accompanying the images. The engravings were more detailed than those seen from copper plate images, and the new steel plates meant that mass production was easier as the steel wore down slower than copper. This sparked an interest in books merging art and literature, a trend carried on in future publications. Looking at the January engraving from Forget Me Not shows an image of a working mother with a young girl a picture many female readers could supposedly associate with. The plates were often targeted towards this female readership and ended up taking precedence over the poems, as the readers could casually flip through the pages and note the printed images included. A number of other plates were replicas of famous works of art, which would suggest an attempt to make the annuals seem more cultural.

Fig. 2: Engraving from Forget Me Not (1832), p.5

For a number of poets and critics, annuals were looked upon with disdain. The Dublin Penny Journal gave an idea why in a review on Forget Me Not (1835) when stating ‘no doubt, in several of the illustrations there is considerable cleverness, but in none of them can we discover anything that we can pronounce as an effort of real genius and the same remark may be applied to the prose and poetry’,[11] highlighting the notion that while the annuals were compiled of pleasing pieces of literature, few could be considered an essential part of the 19^th Century canon. However, the consumer culture that arose in the wake of the gift book phenomenon caused publishers to recognize the profitability of literature, leading to the commercialization of books that is still undoubtedly present in today’s literary scene. Amongst the poets, the commodification of authorship did not sit with well those who wrote to express themselves, and the limited creativity that came with having to write with a set audience and predetermined themes meant that the poems were seen as lacking intellectual flair. John Clare, despite contributing at least 47 poems to various literary annuals, criticized the medium as he disliked the ‘prevailing Romantic-era associations between commercial authorship and promiscuity’.[12] He saw the commercialization of poetry as diminishing the link between the author and his work, and the feminization of poetry in the Romantic era as restricting to intellectual poets. This again serves to highlight the imbalance in gender equality prevalent in contemporary 19^th century society. However, while Clare and a number of other leading poets saw the annuals as diminishing British culture, other lesser known writers could use the medium to gain notoriety.

For less popular poets, annuals were valuable as they could write highly circulated work with set ideologies and predetermined themes, and appear alongside some of the major poets from the 19^th Century. James Hogg, for example, had some of his most widely remembered work appear in a variety of different gift books across the period. An entire anthology of his work which appeared in literary annuals was produced,[13] which highlights the fact that his notoriety was carried through due to his involvement in the annual ‘fad’, as Faxon put it. His reputation spread rapidly as he appeared regularly in leading annuals, with suggestions arising of him creating his own annual of Scottish literature. This shows that popular culture could play a massive role in defining a poet’s career, as Hogg and other poets like him were given the platform to become an integral part of the gift book scene, his work largely being associated with the medium.

Overall, it is clear to see that the gift book and annuals of the second quarter of the 19^th Century came about in a trend that grew in popularity almost as rapidly as it declined by the 1850’s. That the first annual was published in 1823 and by 1832 there were 63 annuals on the market says a lot about the consumer culture that began to arise in the literary scene.[14] The popularity of gift books meant that fewer short publications were being printed, as publishers recognized the profitability of literature and began to transition to commercial books. The annuals themselves were popular as they were a merging of art and literature a cultural gift that could be seen as educational as well decorative. However, the floral designs of the books and the emotionally charged poetry led to the books being targeted towards a largely female readership. This disturbed male poets as it meant the work included would be tailored to a feminized reading public, and limited their creative options as dainty images and vapid stories took precedence over intellectual poems. In an age where the poets saw themselves as the voice of the people, with crucial political upheavals ongoing across the country, the lack of authenticity in authorship and strict content regulations from the editors meant annuals were often looked down upon. However, huge profits meant that publishers continued to pay high fees to see popular names appear in their volumes, leading to the mass commercialization of literature still seen today. The emotional poems may have contributed towards the classification of the period as the Romantic Era, as the gift books sparked emotional, feminized poetry often associated with the time. The phenomenon of gift books and annuals was a short-lived but highly profitable craze, which ultimately sparked notions of celebrity culture and the commercialization of literature still prevalent in today’s society.

[1] Bernadette Brizer, ‘Exploring 19^th Century Gift Books in a Special Collection’, SLIS Connecting: Vol. 2, Iss. 2, Article 8, 2013, .

[2] George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Penguin, 1985) p. 302.

[3] Peter Manning, ‘Wordsworth in the Keepsake’ in Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth Century Publishing and Reading Practices (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 44-73, p. 5.

[4] Peter Manning, ‘Commentary on “The Country Girl”’, Romantic Circles, (2009) .

[5] Vanessa Warne, ‘Morality, Cultural Authority and the Literary Annual Genre’ in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Virginia: West Virginia University Press, 2006) pp. 158-178, p. 2.

[6] Unknown Reviewer, ‘The Literary Souvenir: or Cabinet of Poetry and Romance. Edited by Alaric A. Watts. London, 1825. [Review]’ in The Monthly Review (London: Ralph Griffiths, 1825) pp. 445-446, p.1.

[7] Unknown Reviewer, ‘The Literary Souvenir: or Cabinet of Poetry and Romance. Edited by Alaric A. Watts. London, 1825. [Review]’ in The British Critic (London: A. Applegath, 1825), p.1.

[8] Unknown Reviewer, ‘The Literary Souvenir: or Cabinet of Poetry and Romance. Edited by Alaric A. Watts. London, 1825. [Review]’ in The New Monthly Magazine (London: Henry Colburn, 1825), p.1

[9] Unknown Reviewer, ‘Forget Me Not: A Christmas or New Years Present for 1826. [Review]’ in The Monthly Review (London: Ralph Griffiths, 1825) pp. 446-447, p.1.

[10] Frederick Faxon, Literary Annuals and Gift Books: A Bibliography, 1823-1903, Reprinted with Supplementary Essays, Eleanore Jamieson (ed.) (United Kingdom: Private Libraries Association, 1973), p.5. Further references are to this edition.

[11] Unknown Reviewer, ‘The Forget-Me-Not [Review]’ in The Dublin Penny Journal, Vol. 3, No. 134 (Dublin: Dublin Penny Journal, 1835) p. 135.

[12] Lindsey Eckert, ‘”I’ll be Bound”: John Clare’s “Don Juan”, Literary Annuals, and the Commodification of Authorship’ in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 69, No. 4 (California: University of California Press, 2015), pp. 427-454, p. 5.

[13] Janette Currie (ed.), James Hogg: Contributions to Gift Books and Annuals (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).

[14] Faxon, Literary Annuals.