Here @ ZSR
If you were a holiday shopper in the 1830s, one item on your list might well have been an annual gift bookâan anthology of illustrations, poems, stories, and essays, in an affordable but decorative binding. Several examples of 19th century holiday gift books are now on exhibit in the ZSR Library Special Collections & Archives... Continue reading “A Token of My Affection: 19th Century Christmas Annuals” ›
American artist Rockwell Kent spent Christmas 1918 in a small cabin on an island off the south coast of Alaska. More than twenty years later he recalled the experience in words and woodcut illustrations in a holiday gift book titled A Northern Christmas. The small book was published by the American Artists Group, an organization... Continue reading “A Northern Christmas, by Rockwell Kent (1941)” ›
Of the five Christmas books that Charles Dickens published in the 1840s, the first, A Christmas Carol (1843), is by far the most famous. The following year Dickens came out with The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. Although the book sold well... Continue reading “Rare Book of the Month: The Chimes: A Goblin Story, by Charles Dickens” ›