MINIATURE WHITE CALF
[ALMANACK.]
London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1785.
[London,] Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1785].
48mo? (57 x 33 mm), pp. [24]; engraved throughout, printed on one side only (doubtless on a single sheet) then cut into bifolia and pasted back-to-back to form a book of 13 ff. with the first recto and last verso blank (here pasted to free endpapers); four-page view of Somerset House, red ink duty stamp to title-page; small adhesion to pp. [7–8] affecting a few characters; contemporary white calf, richly gilt, with central red morocco onlay to each board, edges gilt, marbled endpaper, housed in a matching white calf étui, similarly gilt with red morocco onlays; étui lightly dust-stained and rubbed, else an excellent copy; contemporary ink inscription to February ‘le 23. de ce moi [sic] ma fille | Elizabet Ann, et [sic] née'.
A very attractive miniature London Almanack in its elaborate original binding of gilt white calf and matching étui, with an engraving of the soon-to-be-finished Somerset House.
The London Almanack was first produced in 1749 (surviving in a unique copy at the British Library) and appeared annually until at least 1823. Alongside a calendar – with liturgical, astronomical, and court events marked, as well as Oxford and Cambridge term dates and notable anniversaries – is a table of kings’ and queens’ reigns from 1066, a list of London’s Lord Mayors and Sheriffs since 1764, information on holidays and coins’ weights, and a four-page illustration of the riverfront façade of Somerset Place, which would be completed in 1786. A single annotation, in French, records the birth of the owner's daughter: ‘on the 23rd of this month my daughter Elisabet Ann was born’ (trans.).
ESTC records only two institutional copies (BL, State Library of South Australia).
ESTC T127713.
