2012 Adopt A Gift Book Catalog

In December of 2012, AAS celebrated the tradition of the American gift book with a special edition of our popular Adopt-A-Book program (which will be held in full on April 5, 2013). We called this special winter mini-edition “Adopt a Gift Book” and thirty-one of the forty attractive and important American annual volumes were adopted. Support of this program aids the Society’s curators as they pursue new acquisitions for the collection.  And you (or the person you choose to honor) are forever associated with a particular volume in the Society’s collection.

First a word on American annuals, also called gift books. AAS has a collection of nearly 1,000 gift books published between 1830 and 1870. Based on a British tradition, the elegantly bound books contain poetry, prose, and illustrations and were intended to be read at home in the parlor. They were marketed for the holiday trade, and often came out in November with titles such as the Christmas Gift from Fairyland or The Friendship’s Offering and Winter’s Wreath.  The volumes were purchased by parents for their children, by friends, by older brothers and often are dedicated inside with personal notes.

In 2009, the Society embarked on an NEH-funded project called Prints in the Parlor which involved cataloging and digitizing the engraved images inside American annuals to make them more available to researchers. At the project’s conclusion, over 5,000 records were created. By selecting this area of the collection for our winter adoption program, we are, in a way, re-gifting the gift books.