L’Apropos Galant. Année 1823.
Paris: Chez Marcilly, 1822. First edition. Seemingly intended as an annual, but no other issues appeared. With eight hand-colored full-page illustrations. Some rubbing and some chipping to spine. Two small holes (seemingly made by a needle) at fore-edge, presumably for closure ties. Red armorial wax stamp to lower pastedown. A very good, bright, and clean copy. Gold embossed gilt stiff paper wrappers. Miniature ( ” x 1”). 64 pp. Item #17427
Annuals (sometimes referred to as literary annuals or keepsakes) were collections of literature and art published during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were intended to be given as gifts. Though annuals did not emerge in the English-speaking world until the 1820s, literary almanacs had a long history in France and Germany, where titles like the Alamanch des Muses (1765 – 1833) and the Musen-Almanach (1796 – 1800) proliferated. Annuals were very popular among women, with many publishers marketing their annuals exclusively toward female audiences: German publisher J.G. Cotta’s Almanach des Dames, for example, ran from about 1800 to 1830; the Louis Janet series of annuals, Almanach dedié aux Demoiselles, ran from 1812 to 1826. Inheritors of the genre in England include Kate Greenaway, whose popular Alamack series ran from 1883 to 1897.
OCLC records five copies, only two outside Europe (Grolier Club, Morgan Library). Welsh 275. Grand Carteret, p. 494. Houghton 444. Grolier, p. 137.
Price: $350.00