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| It has been the fashion, of late years, to undervalue, most ungratefully as we think, the class of highly illustrated books which formed, more than a quarter of a century ago, so striking a feature of the literature and fine arts of the United Kingdom, under the designation of “Annuals;” and which, besides the services they rendered in diffusing a taste for elegant pursuits among the middle classes, were the means of affording profitable employment to a larger body of persons connected with the executive departments of literature and the fine and useful arts, than any other order of publications whatsoever. To the great body of booksellers, wholesale and retail, in all parts of the country, the Annuals were the sources of considerable profit, easily obtained; and that, moreover, at a period of the year when business is proverbially dull. The retail bookseller in those days, whether in town or country, welcomed none of his literary bales with greater cordiality than he did his annual box of Keepsakes, Souvenirs, Amulets, and Forget-me-nots. We remember to have been informed by a bookseller, in the occupation of a small nook in Cornhill, that he had often, before the arrival of Christmas-day, sold across his counter from a thousand to fifteen hundred of these attractive little volumes; netting (he was an honoured guest at trade-sale dinners) some four shillings (the twenty-fifth copy included) on every twelve-shilling, and seven shillings on every guinea book. In one of the early volumes of his excellent Art Journal, Mr. S.C. Hall (a competent authority on the subject) thus allocates the sum of £90,000, which he presumes to have been the proceeds of the sale of such publications for the year 1829; and so far from having exaggerated the amount, we have satisfactory grounds for the conviction that he has very much understated it. On the Keepsake of the preceding year, £10,500 was expended; and we may fairly infer that its sale realized a much larger sum:-- | |
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Proceeds of the Sale of Annuals for 1829 Authors and Editors Painters for Pictures or Copyrights Engravers Copper-plate Printers Letter-press Printers Paper Manufacturers Book-binders Silk Manufacturers and Leather Sellers Advertisements Incidental Expenses Publisher’s Profits Retail Booksellers’ Profits |
£90,000 6,000 3,000 12,000 5,000 5,000 6,000 9,000 500 2,000 1,500 50,000 10,000 30,000 £90,000 |
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Whatever may have been the amount, the proportions of the cost of the different departments enumerated by Mr. Hall are probably not very wide of the mark. To Messrs. Longman & Co., who were the publishers of the Literary Souvenir, and afterwards of the whole of the Annuals projected and carried on by Mr. Charles Heath, these books must have been productive of an enormous amount of profit; and we can hardly imagine any item in their more recent business-gains that can have approximated to the sums they must have realized from time to time by these publications. To booksellers, authors, artists, and, in fact, to all persons engaged in catering for the taste of the literary public, the bird’s-eye glance we are about to cast over the Annuals of the last thirty-five years can hardly prove destitute of interest; nor will it be considered inconsistent with the character of a publication devoted to the service of a department of trade which has benefited so largely by them. We have “been at some pains and pulling down of books” for the purpose of refreshing our recollection as to the comparative merits and deficiencies of these unfairly depreciated works: and we shall endeavour to draw the line with as much impartiality as possible. We shall not attempt to extenuate defects which are inseparable from publications that are more or less dependent on the contributions of various hands for their success. Many Annuals which commanded, in their day, a large and profitable circulation were doubtless but indifferent representatives of the literature and fine arts of the United Kingdom; yet there was hardly one of them that did not contain, from time to time, both articles and engravings of the highest order of merit; whilst the best of them have never been surpassed in this or any other country, for the exquisite beauty, not only of their embellishments, but of many of the literary articles, the poems more especially, with which they abounded. The Athenaeum, the Spectator, the Examiner, the Art Journal, and several of our most trustworthy critical periodicals have, to a very late date, protested against the injustice of which these works have been the objects, and have borne cordial testimony, as they might fairly do, to their merits, literary and artistical. Having censured the disposition which exists in some quarters to underrate these serials, and the services they have rendered to public taste, the Athenaeum goes on to say: “On the wings of these painted humming-birds the fame of the poet and the painter was wafted faster and farther than it could have been through the ordinary channels of publication; and the public will find in their pages a body of more beautiful poetry, of the fugitive class, than in any other original English publication.” The |
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modern literary lady’s maid who raises her eyes from the deep melodrame of the Family Herald to sneer at the Annuals, cannot, of course, be aware that very many of the best lyrical poems of nearly all our most
popular contemporary writers appeared in the first instance in their pages. To name their literary contributors seriatim would be to enumerate almost every writer of mark of our day, with the exceptions of Thomas
Moore, Rogers, and Crabbe. Moore seems to have cherished a rooted prejudice against the whole race, because he found that they interfered with the Christmas sale of his poetical volumes. This perfectly intelligible
hostility was not confined to him; Southey complains with more bitterness than dignity, that “these Annuals have grievously hurt the sale of all such books as used to be bought for presents. In this way,” he adds,
“my poems have suffered greatly—to the diminution, I doubt not, of half their sale.” Charles Lamb was absolutely rabid in the expression of his aversion to them; and gentle James Montgomery could not conceal his
apprehension that they would impair the sale of those ill-printed ten-and-sixpenny volumes, which the public of his day were expected to prefer to them. One of the most bitter revilers of annual publications was
the late John Gibson Lockhart. He had made an unsuccessful attempt to establish one himself, which should depend for its success altogether on its literary merits; for it was coarsely printed, and professed to
exclude engravings, upon principle. Professor Wilson, Delta, and several other Scottish worthies contributed to its pages. The essays, of which it was composed, claimed to be on subjects of permanent interest, but
they were woefully dull, and seemed to have possessed but little attraction for readers, Scotch or English; for the experiment was never repeated. This volume, entitled the Janus, may now be purchased from many
book-stalls for sixpence, although originally a twelve-shilling book. Its failure disappointed Mr. Lockhart more than he cared to acknowledge; and although he had contributed one of the most remarkable productions of
his pen to the Literary Souvenir (we refer to his “Epistle from Abbotsford, a description of the social and domestic habits of Sir Walter Scott and his friends”), he let slip no opportunity of having a fling at
what he was wont to call “toy-shop literature.” In his life of Scott he seems to exult in Sir Walter’s confession that he had sold Mr. Heath two tales and a dramatic poem which he knew to be worthless, the former
of which had been omitted from his “Chronicles of the Canongate,” at Ballantyne’s earnest entreaty, on account of their manifest inferiority. We see no ground for exultation in the matter. Scott would surely have
acted more fairly towards Mr. Heath’s “toy-shop” if he had withheld his aid altogether, instead of thus taking advantage of the ignorance of his customer of the value of the commodity, which he had proposed to
purchase of him. Had all the editors of, and contributors to, Annuals been guilty of similar folly on the one hand and unfairness on the other, there would have been but little that was redeeming in their pages. We
have already asserted that, with one or two exceptions, the whole body of our most eminent living writers of the time contributed largely to these publications, and many of their most admired lyrics have been first
published therein. What, then, becomes of the cuckoo cry which would place all these books in the same category? But let us see what sort of editors were connected, from first to last, with this much-abused order
of periodicals. Here are some of their names, beginning with that of the editor of the Janus himself: John Gibson Lockhart, Thomas Campbell, Thomas Hood, Dr. Croly, T.K. Hervey, Thomas Dale, Thomas Pringle, Allan
Cunningham, Mary Russell Mitford, Caroline Norton, L.E. Landon, Crofton Croker, Leitch Ritchie, Alaric Watts, Agnes Strickland, Mary Howitt, S.C. Hall, Anna Maria Hall, Thomas Hartwell Horne, Sir Harris Nicolas, W.
Harrison Ainsworth, Henry Neele, Thomas Roscoe, and several other writers not wholly unknown to the public. Will it be believed that all these persons were in a conspiracy to render the volumes they superintended
as little worthy of public favour as possible? Or can it with truth be affirmed that they had no knowledge of the commodity which formed the staple of their trade? They may have relied too much on “the might and
magic of a name”; but the error is one for which the public rather than the literary purveyor for their amusement are chiefly responsible. It has not now to be discovered that |
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Lockhart’s admirable “Epistle from Abbotsford” was wholly overlooked, because it was anonymous; and many poems of exquisite beauty, which appeared in these volumes under similar circumstances, never succeeded in
obtaining the slightest notice. We have not now to learn the truth of the poet’s aphorism:-- |
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The best of the early writings of Carlyle and Thackeray had no effect upon the sale of Fraser’s Magazine, and obtained but little notice from the critical press. Coleridge’s “Youth and Age,” Wordsworth’s lyric on
“Scott’s Departure for Italy,” and some of the finest poems of Felicia Hemans and Mrs. Browning, were wholly unappreciated on their first appearance in the Annuals. A large proportion of the most striking poems of
William Mackworth Praed appeared in two of the Annuals, and when republished in the complete edition of his writings now in preparation, will doubtless be duly esteemed by the very critics |
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who would have us believe that the publications which first gave them to the world were destitute of literary merit. Praed affords a striking example of what the Annuals have done for authors who writings displayed
any element of popularity. He has been dead many years, and no authentic edition of his collected poems has yet made is appearance. He stands indebted, therefore, for much of the celebrity which has attended his
graceful and element muse to the circulation of his poems in these despised publications; and there are few readers of literary taste of the present day who do not know where to look for those admirable productions
of his pen, “The Red Fisherman,” and the “Legend of the “Drachenfels.” For a few pages of his poetry, Praed was often paid fifty guineas, and must on the aggregate have received from first to last upwards of £500
for his contributions to such works; quite as much, after the rate, as Southey would have got for his “Pilgrim of Compostella,” could it have been crowded into the limited space which was at the disposal of such
volumes. We should like to be informed where a poet of the present day would be able to command a tenth part of that sum for his occasional verses. Among the artists, some of those who had been most benefited in pocket and in fame by their connection with annual publications, were the foremost to depreciate them. Not so with the “better brothers,” however: Lawrence, Wilkie, Stothard, Leslie, Turner, Collins, Uwins, Stanfirled, Danby, Stuart Newton, Roberts, and other eminent painters. They were ever ready to acknowledge the services rendered to them by the circulation, not only in England, but in every part of the Continent, of highly finished translations of their respective works; thus making their names familiar as “household words” to thousands of persons who had never heard of them before. Previous to the appearance of the Annuals, there were few, if any, collectors of modern pictures in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, or Leeds, and there is now scarcely a gentleman of wealth in any one of those cities who has not a gallery of modern works of art, many of them by the best masters; whilst the prices of our English painters have done on increasing with the demand until they have reached, in many instances, six times the amount they used to ask for their works. In the sale of the effects of the late Mr. Rogers, a sketch by Leslie, for which the poet had given £40, produced £1,000; and another sketch, also by Leslie, purchased in 1824 for £10 was sold no great while ago, by Christie & Manson, for £350. We may add, as a proof of the judgment with which the subjects for plates for some of these works were selected, that many of those which were engraved for the Literary Souvenir have been reproduced upon a much larger scale for separate publication, in consequence of the demand created by the smaller prints. Some of these transcripts were indeed of such marvellous beauty as to become objects of curiosity and admiration in all parts of Europe. For several of the plates of the Literary Souvenir and Amulet from a hundred to a hundred and eighty guineas were respectively given; for the gem after Martin’s “Curtius,” Mr. Ackermann paid Le Keux two hundred guineas; and for the portrait of Lady Dover, from Lawrence, by J.H. Watt, Mr. Alaric Watts paid one hundred and fifty guineas. Painters were, however, not always as grateful as they might have been for these endeavours to do justice to their works. Mr. Turner declined to execute a commission which he had undertaken for Mr. Watts, because that gentleman had given Mr. John Pye one hundred guineas for the small plate after his “Ehrenbreitstein,” included in the Souvenir for 1829, and thus raised the prices to Mr. Turner of some large plates on copper, which he was about to have engraved on his own account! Such an anecdote would seem hardly credible if told of any other painter, but is not uncharacteristic of that wonderful, but most eccentric and penurious genius. To the late Rudolf Ackermann is due the merit of having been the first to naturalize the German Taschenbuch in this country, but he made no attempt to improve in any respect upon the original model; for whilst the literature of the Forget-me-not could claim but little affinity with that of Annuals edited by Goëthe, Schiller, Uhland, Tieck, and other men of similar mark in Germany, its embellishments were, in the first instance, immeasurably inferior to the beautiful vignette engravings of John Pye for the well-known pocket-books of Peacock, which preceded by many years Mr. Ackermann’s attempt, and which formed the chief gift-books of their day. The Forget-me-not was first published in November, 1823 (postdated, as were all it successors, a couple of months), under the editorship of William Coombe, the well-known author of the “Tour of Dr. Syntax,” who was succeeded in the ensuing year by Frederick Shoberl. Twelve of the prints by which the first volume was illustrated were coarsely stippled vignettes, emblematical of the Seasons, from wretched designs by Burney. The literature was little better than the plates, and underwent but slight improvement in the two or three succeeding years. Tales translated from the German, genealogies of reigning monarchs, with ruled pages for pocket-book memoranda, formed the staple of the publication in its early stage. The novelty of the idea, however, commanded success for the venture, and afforded ample encouragement to Mr. Ackermann for improvement. Although the general character of the literary contents for the Forget-me-not, would not bear a favourable comparison with those of most of its rivals, it was often redeemed by poems of |
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considerable merit. James Montgomery, whose beautiful lyric, beginning “Night is the time for rest,” was first published in its pages, was a frequent contributor, as were Dr. Croly, Mrs. Hemans, L.E.L., Miss
Mitford, Neele, and others, all of whom were to be found elsewhere in better company. Some of the plates were excellent; the “Cruxifixion,” engraved by Le Keux, at a cost of two hundred guineas, more especially.
But, the subjects for illustration were often ill-selected, and sometimes indifferently executed. The earlier volumes are said to have attained a circulation of from fifteen to twenty thousand copies. The
Forget-me-not was discontinued in 1848. The Friendship’s Offering; or Annual Remembrancer, was commenced in 1824, by Lupton Relfe, formerly a bookseller in Cornhill. A few indifferent views of the Continental cities, a tale by Mrs. Opie, and some poor verses, with ruled pages for memoranda, were then its unpromising characteristics. The two ensuing volumes exhibited but little improvement, and it was not until placed under the superintendence of Mr. T.K. Hervey that any sensible advance was perceptible. Had the quality of the embellishments of that volume been equal to that of its literature, it would have stood a better excellent change of success; but such was not the fact; and it was not until the work had passed into the hands of Messrs. Smith & Elder that it made any pretence of competing with the Amulet or Souvenir. Under Mr. Hervey’s management, it had enlisted a very respectable corps of contributors, who did for a poet what they might not have done for the bookseller. The Friendship’s Offering was afterwards conducted by Thomas Pringle; and, on his death, by Mr. Leitch Ritchie. Much charming poetry by Thos. Hood, Mackworth Praed, Mrs. Hemans, L.E.L., Lord (then Mr.) Macaulay – we remember his “Armada,” among other of his lyrics—appeared original in its pages. Mr. Praed’s “Red Fisherman,” his most successful poem, and Southey’s “Monody on the Princess Charlotte,” were first printed in this publication. The Friendship’s Offering was discontinued in 1844. The Graces, out of which sprang, in the ensuing year, the Literary Souvenir, made its appearance also in 1824, under the editorship of the Rev. George Croly, a poet of considerable eminence, and a prose writer of more than ordinary vigour. In 1823 Mr. Alaric Watts conceived the not very difficult idea of establishing a better literary annual than either the Forget-me-not or the Friendship’s Offering, and with that impression laid his proposals before his booksellers, Messrs. Hurst & Robinson. They approved of his plan, and consented to co-operate with him. After a brief interval, however, they entered into an arrangement with Mr. Croly, so that Mr. Watts’s negotiation with them fell to the ground. Like the first volumes of the Forget-me-not and Friendship’s Offering, the Graces contained the usual ruled pages for memoranda; but in every other respect it was superior to either of them. A few pleasing poems were scattered through its pages; but with the exception of a tale reprinted from the Literary Gazette, and a few paragraphs of smart prose persiflage, it had little to distinguish it from the Forget-me-not or the Friendship’s Offering. The subjects were ill-chosen, and indifferently engraved; and the absurdity of the title, illustrated by the three stapping nude grisettes on the covers and as a frontispiece, put an early period to its existence. It died in the year of its birth, and was succeeded by the Literary Souvenir. To the editor of that publication has been ascribed on all hands, the marked impetus which was then given to works of its class. “The Literary Souvenir,” says Mr. S.C. Hall, in his Art Journal, “was a huge step in advance. To Mr. Watts was mainly owing the vast improvement they underwent. There is no living author to whom British art is so much indebted as to Mr. Watts. The engravings which embellished the Literary Souvenir have never been equalled in England, since the abandonment of that ably conducted publication. He laboured, and most successfully, to raise the character of this class of works, so as to convert what had been previously little more than a toy into a production which represented the Art talent of the country.” Mr. Hall was one of the most successful rivals of Mr. Watts in this sort of enterprise, and is therefore entitled to attention upon such a question. Our glance at the history of the Literary Souvenir, however, must be deferred for the present. In our concluding article on these publications,1 we propose to associate the Literary Souvenir with the Cabinet of Modern Art, under the same management. We shall, therefore, confine ourselves, in this place, to the facts that it was commenced in 1824, and discontinued in 1834, when it was succeeded by the guinea volume above alluded to. The Amulet, edited by Mr. S.C. Hall, originally published by W. Baynes & Son, and afterwards by Westley & Davies, began with the volume for 1827. It was the first publication of its class which entered, as regarded its literary pretensions, into any competition with the Literary Souvenir. Differing from it in plan, as it addressed itself more particularly to the religious classes, it seemed to fulfil to the letter the chief objects of its projectors. It included many of the contributors to the Literary Souvenir, along with several eminent writers on religious subjects, whose articles were confined to its own pages. Although the engravings in the first volume of the Amulet were of no great mark, the work became, in subsequent years, a formidable rival to the Souvenir; for, instead of copying designs made on the spur of the occasion, its proprietors were enabled by the good taste and activity of its editor, to obtain the loan of first-class pictures |
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of the English School, which they had spared no pains to have executed in a style worthy of the reputation of the respective painters. A leading object of the Amulet was to blend instruction with literary
amusement. Some of the articles which had reference to this feature of its plan—those by the late Dr. Walsh, for example—were of general interest, and contained no sentiment which might not have been accepted by
any order of readers of Christian principles. Some of the best of the shorter poems of Mrs. Hemans, among others, her charming “Hebrew Mother,” the “Wanderings of Cain,” and other contributions worthy of note from
the pen of S.T. Coleridge, were also to be found in its pages. Many of the contributors to the Amulet were common to other publications of the kind, but seem to have supplied their happiest poetical efforts to its
pages. Some of the sweetest lyrics of Mrs. Southey, L.E.Landon, T.K. Hervey, and James Montgomery, are scattered through its volumes. For the Art department of his work, Mr. Hall catered with great taste and
judgment. The wonderful engraving by Le Keux, from Martin’s “Crucifixion,” was produced at a cost of one hundred and eighty guineas, and was of unrivalled, beauty of its class; and several other of its plates—those
from Lawrence’s “Lady Blessington,” Howard’s “Cottage Girl,” and Uwins’s “Mandolin” more especially—are said to have cost upwards of a hundred guineas each, and were all exceedingly beautiful. But no merit could
withstand the frantic competition created by Mr. Charles Heath, with his Keepsakes, Books of Beauty, Picturesque Annuals, Turner’s Annuals, etc. The Amulet was discontinued in 1834. Mr. Hall published, in
subsequent years, a series of volumes, in which chosen extracts from our best poets were illustrated by small but beautifully executed prints from the designs of the best modern painters. It was entitled the Book
of Gems, and was published in three consecutive yearly volumes. The Keepsake was first published by Hurst & Chance in 1828. The success of the Literary Souvenir, to which, indeed, the masterly engravings of Chas. Heath had in some degree contributed, induced him to attempt a work of the same kind, upon a larger and more important scale, for his own benefit. A more formidable rival could hardly have entered the field. A first-rate engraver himself, with the command of the zealous services of all of the leading members of his profession, many of whom had attained to their proficiency in the art in the studios of his father and himself, he possessed peculiar facilities, so far as the art of engraving was concerned, for the production, in the best possible manner, of the works of this description; and had he possessed corresponding means of securing perfection for the literary department of his books, his rivalry would have been, from the first moment, irresistible. But beyond his ability to engrave, or cause to be engraved, the subjects he might select, in the most finished style of the art, he had few qualifications for success in such an enterprise; for his taste in the selection of his subjects was far from being of a high order; and in all matters connected with the Belles Lettres he was altogether at fault. The extraordinary beauty of the engravings which formed the embellishments of his first three or four volumes, rendered their success altogether independent of their literary contents, which, notwithstanding the enormous sums expended upon them, were often beneath contempt. In spite of this serious drawback, however, upwards of twelve thousand copies of the volume for 1828 were disposed of in a few weeks, and that number was, in the course of three or four years, almost doubled. The volume for 1828 was edited by William Harrison Ainsworth, the well-known novelist; and the contributions were all of them anonymous. It happened that among the professional pupils of Mr. Heath who had profited but slenderly, by his instructions, was one Mr. Frederick Mansel Reynolds, the son of Mr. Reynolds, the well-known dramatist; and to that gentleman, who fancied he could wield the pen with more success than he had used the burin, was the management of the literary department of this splendid enterprise most foolishly entrusted, with almost unlimited means of securing adhesion of the first writers of the age at his command (the literature of the Keepsake for 1829 is said to have cost £2000). Mr. Reynolds set out upon his editorial tour immediately after his instalment; and, after much coaxing and cajolerly, succeeded in exchanging a £500 bank-note for two of the feeblest sketches that have ever fallen from Sir Walter Scott’s pen—“Aunt Margaret’s Mirror” and the “Laird’s Jock.” Wordsworth and Southey, although they had complained with much bitterness of the effect of the popularity of the Annuals on the Christmas sale of their poetical volumes, allured by Mr. Reynolds’ blandishments and Heath’s banks-notes, made up their minds, on the principle, it may be presumed, of quartering upon the enemy, to enlist under his banners, and contributed two of their poorest poems to his work. Southey had indeed proposed to swamp it altogether by a poem of several thousand lines in extent (“The Pilgrim of Compostella”), and seems to have thought himself very ill-used because he could not be allowed to inundate the publication with so inordinate a “flood of rhyme.” Coleridge, who had volunteered his much admired lyric (“Youth and Age”) without any stipulation whatever, to the Literary Souvenir, received fifty guineas from Mr. Reynolds for two or three indifferent epigrams. Then there was an historical fragment, by Sir James Mackintosh; and a |
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ruck of lords and ladies, whose flimsy contributions were not very severely shamed by those of the skilled professionals who had taken Mr. Heath’s bounty-money, though most of them were mere volunteers in his
corps. The first volume of the Keepsake, of which from 12,000 to 15,000 copies were sold, is said to have cost 11,000 guineas! That for 1829 must have demanded a considerably larger outlay, as nearly 20,000 copies
were disposed of in less than a month. Upon this principle, the work under Mr. Reynold’s superintendence was continued. In the first four or five volumes but little relaxation of Mr. Heath’s efforts was observable.
In spite of the meretriciousness of taste, which blended the tawdry designs of Parris and Kenny Meadows, Corbould and Wright, with the finest achievements of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Turner, Stothard, Martin, Leslie,
Smirke, Chalon, Standfield, Uwins, and Flaxman, the work was one in which the pictures in some measure atoned for the poverty and feebleness of its literature. But when the plates began to partake of the
meretriciousness and inanity of the letter-press, the publication declined in circulation as rapidly as it had hitherto advanced. Elated by its success, Mr. Heath subsequently embarked in various other
speculations: Turner’s Annual and the Pictorial Annual, edited by Leitch Ritchie; the Book of Beauty, edited by Lady Blessington; Children of the Nobility after Chalon; Turner’s Rivers of France, and other
undertakings demanding not only considerable capital, but a large portion of the time that should have been devoted to his magnus opum. Hence, in a great measure, its ultimate failure. From 1829 to 1835 inclusive
(seven volumes), the Keepsake continued to be edited by Mr. Reynolds. In 1836, it was, with greatly curtailed resources, placed under the superintendence of the Honourable Mrs. Norton—a change which promised
improvement where it was most needed; but an economy as misplaced and senseless as the lavish profusion which had characterized its former management, deprived that lady of all chance of achieving what she was
fully capable, with due means and appliances, of accomplishing; and in 1837, the work was handed over to Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, who having much elegant leisure at her disposal, consented to work at what
linendrapers call “a very low figure;” and then it was that the principle of farming-out the literary contents of the book (that most fatal of mistakes) first commenced. After a year’s experiment, her ladyship,
albeit the daughter of a duke, seems to have failed to give Mr. Heath satisfaction. In the volume for 1838, the contributors were once more anonymous; and, in 1839, Mr. F.M. Reynolds again assumed the direction
of the publication, and seems to have looked for his literary materials almost exclusively to aristocratic sources—lords and ladies, poetical bankers, and chairmen of committees of the House of Commons; Mr. Bernal
and Sir John Paul being among the most prominent and extensive of its writers. In its later years the embellishments (not being in the fortunate condition of the letter-press) underwent a steady deterioration. The
burin gave way to the stipple (a vastly cheaper process of engraving), and such painters as Lawrence, Leslie, Turner, Howard, Martin, Collins, Smirke, Stanfield, and others, were exchanged for designers of a much
lower and less legitimate grade, French, as well as English. “Ball-Room Interiors,” by Eugene Lami; . . . succeeded those charming specimens of the English school which had rendered some of the earlier volumes so
deservedly attractive. In 1840, Mr. Reynolds was once more deposed for the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, under whose surveillance it became more aristocratical and imbecile than ever. In 1841, Lady Emmeline was
succeeded by Lady Blessington, who had edited Heath’s Book of Beauty from 1834 (the first volume having been published under the superintendence of L.E.L.), and who now undertook the literary management of both
works. The fascinations of mind and person which had made her ladyship’s house a rendezvous for most of the eminent literary and fashionable men of the day, rendered this arrangement in many respects advantageous.
Her ladyship engaged to provide the letter-press of both volumes for a stipulated sum, and had so large a connection with the literary world, and so many agremens at her command, wherewith to reward her faithful
adherents, that she was never called upon to pay in vulgar coin of the realm for any contributions to her pages. All poets and prosateurs who enlisted under her banners and wore her favours, had the run of her
kitchen and entrée to the magnificent drawing-rooms of Gore House whenever they pleased; and many of them, as might have been expected, worked for her con amore; so that, with some of the conditions which usually
attach to gratuitous contributions, she managed to infuse a degree of life into the two works to which they had hitherto been strangers. All the literary habitues of Gore House were ready, on the shortest notice,
to furnish her with some scrap of prose or poetry from the portfolios, and these were often of a better order than those costly failures which had dulled the pages and denuded the pocket of Mr. Heath in former
years. Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer, Landor, Talfourd, Lord Strangefore, Disraeli, Procter, and other literary celebrities, came gallantly to her aid; and her books, which had long survived the only Annuals that
claimed to have any literary character, began to look up. But beside these publications Lady Blessington wrote or edited several other volumes for Mr. |
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Heath, which were intended as Gift-books: The Belle of the Season, a satirical poem, her ladyship’s own composition, illustrated by a series of very charming designs by Alfred E. Chalon, R.A.; Flowers of
Loveliness, Gems of Beauty, and similar butterfly-books. On the death of Lady Blessington, in 1848, she was succeeded in her editorships by her niece, Miss Power, who continued the Keepsake until the year 1856,
when it died after a protracted existence of twenty-eight years. Like many other entrepreneurs who have disregarded the proverbial injunction to “let well alone,” Mr. Heath determined, as we have seen, to make a
fortune at once, and withdrawing his attention from the Keepsake, which had promised to realize him so splendid a profit, had embarked in several other high-priced illustrated works, all bearing, more or less, the
same marks of the energy, activity, and professional skill which he had displayed in his first adventure; and all of them succeeding to a certain point, and only then failing to realize his expectations because he
permitted himself to be led away from them to newer speculations at the moment when his undivided attention was most essential to their success. Of these works we shall endeavor to supply some account. . . . [This deleted portion concerns the Landscape Annual and others edited by Leitch Ritchie] In 1838, he [Heath] had commenced a work of an entirely different character—a series of female portraits, entitled The Book of Beauty, which was placed under the superintendence, first of Miss Landon, and afterwards of the Countess of Blessington, and of which fifteen volumes were published by Messrs. Longman. The grand defect of this publication was a cardinal one: a large majority of the ladies did not possess the popular qualification ascribed to them, and some of them were unluckily the converse of good looking. The painter may have been sometimes at fault, and at others the engraver. However this may have been, the plates were often unattractively, and when this happened to be the case there was usually no other quality in the original about which the public cared one farthing. The literary illustrations of these plates, such at least as represented real ladies of fashion, were, as a matter of course, hyperbolically complimentary; hence the constantly recurring absurdity of verses eulogizing beauty which had no existence in the print to which they were attached. The plan of the publication was, moreover, the cause of a great inequality in its literature. But it cannot be denied that, with all these drawbacks, the Book of Beauty contains many admirable sketches in prose and verse of a class which is not to be met with elsewhere. |
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1. [Continued in The Bookseller December 24, 1858 585-589; this article gives a brief description of many “minor” annuals that did not survive beyond 5 years] [Return
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