Les délices des champs; etrenes chantantes pour l'an 1810

Paris: Marcilly, [1809]

64 p. | 31 x 19 mm

A fully engraved and very miniature almanac, little more than an inch tall and housed in a charming little metal box lined with manuscript waste. These tiny almanacs, invariably illustrated and fully engraved, appeared under scores of titles from roughly 1740 through 1850, culminating perhaps in the English Bijou almanacs published by Albert Schloss 1836-1843. A dozen courtly illustrations paired with verse are followed by a daily calendar stripped to the basics: days of the week, dates, feast days, and moon phases. At end is a two-page ad for additional almanacs, as well as gold tooling services. ¶ Almanacs were particularly prone to miniature formats, in part to ensure they would fit in one's pocket or handbag "so as to be ready for instant consultation" (Bondy). Women were the usual audience for these miniature editions. Bromer and Edison note that these little bijou editions especially "were designed for the pleasure of affluent ladies." Bondy remarks they were intended for young people, too, and "were OFTEN DISTRIBUTED BY CHOCOLATE SHOPS, pastry cooks, etc. as New Year presents to their best clients." ¶ These aren't terribly rare, but the little metal box was too adorable to pass up.

CONDITION: Sewn as a single signature and covered in a gold-tooled binding of red leather, frequently so found and probably as issued; edges gilt. Stored in a tiny metal box, probably brass, lined inside and out with paper manuscript waste. The inside bottom appears to be a fragment of letter dated February 17, and the top of the lid contains the word année. Did someone consciously decide to make these chronological markers visible for an almanac case? Probably just a coincindence...  ¶ Corners of the leaves a bit creased. Leather rubbed, with a small chip at the head of the spine; paper covering the box a trifle soiled.

REFERENCES: John Grand-Carteret, Les almanachs français bibliographie-iconographie (1896), p. 415, #1588 ("the same almanac exists for the year 1811"); Doris V. Welsh, A Bibliography of Miniature Books (1989), p. 70, #2259 ¶ Anne C. Bromer and Julian I. Edison, Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures (2007), p. 98 (cited above, with more on their standard content), 103 (on miniature finger almanacs of the later 18th century: "These were designed to fit into the purse or sack of a lady of the period"); Louis W. Bondy, Miniature Books (1981), p. 21 (on the 18th century: “Women and children were now admitted much more freely to the hitherto mainly masculine domain of books, and tiny books in particular were much more frequently specially designed for them. In the wake of such developments they became more worldly and less austere."), 50 (cited above, and placing their origins in the 1760s; "Most of the copies are bound in contemporary morocco, the majority coloured red or maroon"); Ariane Fennetaux, "Women's Pockets and the Construction of Privacy in the Long Eighteenth Century," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 20.3 (Spring 2008), p. 315 ("The appearance, towards the end of the seventeenth century, of capacious pockets allowing them to carry all sorts of objects with them shows a profound change in their lifestyles. The multiplication of portable accessories specifically meant for women such as female pocket snuffboxes or smelling bottles, pocketbooks, and almanacs or pocket-sized editions of books targeted at women testifies to this change."); David McKitterick, The Invention of Rare Books (2018), p. 251 (“the mid eighteenth-century taste for miniature books—little more than bijoux—was encouraged by such feats as the perle type cut by Louis Luce for the Imprimerie Royale in 1740 or shortly before"); Elisabeth Leedham-Green, "Seventeenth-Century Cambridge Pyxides," For the Love of the Binding (2000), p. 205 (on small wooden boxes used for document storage in early modern England, though the principle may apply broadly to the notion of portability: "their sturdiness and usually small size also suggests that it was envisaged that they would venture, quite literally, into the field")

Item #557