Available today at 9 a.m.

Additional Options

A New Year’s Wreath (of Sorts)

January 3, 2017

New Year’s greetings! Decorative covers of some of our many gift books and annuals figure in the the online project Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930, including this volume entitled Christmas blossoms, and New Year’s wreath, for MDCCCLI:

Cover of Christmas blossoms, and New Year's wreath (Boston, 1851). From the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cover of Christmas blossoms, and New Year’s wreath (Boston, 1851). From the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This is one of eight volumes published in Boston by Phillips & Sampson or printed in Philadelphia by E.H. Butler between 1847 and 1854 and cataloged in Special Collections with the call number Y 95C49.

For more on the contents and trappings of gift books, see the essay “Tokens of Affection: Art, Literature, and Politics in Nineteenth Century American Gift Books” within the Publishers’ Bindings Online project. 

Images of the covers, spines, and sometimes endpapers featured in Publishers’ Bindings Online can also be found as part of the Digital Public Library of America.