The American Antiquarian Society's eighth annual Adopt-A-Book event was held on May 5, 2015. The Adopt-A-Book Catalog describes a variety of items acquired by AAS curators. All items were offered for "adoption." That is, donors "adopted" items by pledging the stated amount. In return AAS permanently recorded the adopter's name 1) on a special bookplate attached to each item, and 2) in the AAS library general catalog. See all 174 adopted titles in the General Catalog.
A Bouquet of Sea Flowers
Zachariah Mudge, The Fisher-Boy. Boston: American Tract Society, 1865.
Adopted by Lane Goss
This color-printed frontispiece depicting sea mosses belongs to a Sunday school story about a teenaged boy who has to support his destitute family as a fisherman. Despite his pressing responsibilities, he takes the time to teach two middle-class neighbor girls about the “flowers” that grow in the ocean.
The Advocate of Moral Reform (New York, NY), Jan. 1 – Dec. 15, 1840.
Adopted by Lane Goss
This periodical began in 1835 and lasted until 1846. It’s mission was to save women who had fallen away from the influence of clergy or ministers by being a moral guide to them. It used a variety of tactics to rescue fallen women including naming men who had seduced them away from a moral center.
Ballou, Maturin Murray, 1820-1895. Captain Lovell, or, The Pirate's Cave : a Tale of the War of 1812. (Chamption Novels, No. 6) New York: Robert M. De Witt, 1870.
Adopted by Sally and Rudy Ruggles
Dime Novels were cheap thrills (costing, you guessed it, 10 cents!). Formulaic adventure stories issued in numbered series, they enjoyed an enormous readership from the last third of the 19th century into the early 20th century. These lurid pot-boilers reveled in all forms of criminality and outlaw behavior. They were often set in Western locales populated with outlaws and bandits; or on the sea with brigands, buccaneers and privateers; or on city streets teaming with scenes of seduction, criminal intent, and sometime even detective or police work. The five examples here are all in their original pictorial wrappers, some hand colored.