Annual and gift book

Abstract

The nineteenth‐century gift book, valued for its decorative material form as well as for its content, was a transatlantic publishing phenomenon marketed primarily, though not exclusively, for the winter‐holiday market. Literary annuals (gift book titles marketed yearly from 1822 through mid‐century) and illustrated poetic gift books from the 1840s to the 1870s integrated new print technologies and offered authors, engravers, and illustrators an important outlet for circulating a wide range of poetry, prose, and visual art. Widely consumed by readers, and often favorably reviewed in leading journals of the period, annuals and gift books have been noted for the high quality of some of their contributions, as well as for the important roles they played in the history of publishing and material culture and in nineteenth‐century politics of gender and race.