| Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books Contributor(s): Hogg, James (Author), Currie, Janette (Editor), Hughes, Gillian (Editor) |
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ISBN: 074861527X ISBN-13: 9780748615278 Publisher: Edinburgh University Press OUR PRICE: $114.00 Product Type: Hardcover Published: April 2006 Annotation: The Annuals of the 1820s and 1830s, like their modern counterparts, were designed as Christmas and New Year's presents. The latest developments in printing and book design were employed in the preparation of these attractive pocket-sized compilations of poetry, prose and engravings for drawing-room display. Well-known authors such as James Hogg, Walter Scott, L.E.L., and John Clare were eagerly recruited and handsomely paid as contributors, their work appearing alongside that of young hopefuls such as Alfred Tennyson. In drawing together Hogg's work for the Annuals and in providing the appropriate context the editors shed new light on Hogg's working practices and his relations with editors and artists, uniting material hitherto scattered in rare volumes and in manuscripts and making a solid contribution to knowledge of the Annual publishing phenomenon itself. Several new versions of Hogg's tales and poems are included in "Contributions to Literary Annuals," which also reproduces the music and illustrations that accompanied them. The range of Hogg's contributions is surprising -- family poems ("An Aged Widow's Lament"), an outpouring of patriotic feeling ("The Harp of Ossian"), traditional stories of devils and ghosts ("The Border Chronicler"), an exemplification of divine justice ("The Cameronian Preacher's Tale"), and an account of group psychology ("A Psychological Curiosity"). The volume also includes a group of pieces contributed to Annuals designed primarily for children, and these are supplemented by a reprinting of the gift-book he dedicated to his own family, "A Father's New Year's Gift," "Contributions to Literary Annuals" highlights a coherent part of Hogg's totalliterary output, and in doing so provides new insights to an increasingly popular area of nineteenth-century publishing history. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General |
| Dewey: 821.7 |
| Series: Collected Works of James Hogg |
| Physical Information: 1.8" H x 6.4" W x 9.1" (1.85 lbs) 480 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In 1822 Rudolph Ackermann's Forget Me Not [...] for 1823 established a fashion for handsomely produced and copiously illustrated annual anthologies of short literary works. Books of this kind were designed as Christmas and New Year's presents, and in the 1820s and 1830s they became a significant publishing phenomenon. Like other well-known writers of the time (including Wordsworth, Scott, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon), Hogg was a contributor to the annuals, and Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books brings together all the Hogg texts that were either written for, or first published in, annuals and gift-books. 'Invocation to the Queen of the Fairies' in the Literary Souvenir for 1825 was Hogg's first known contribution to an annual, and thereafter writing for the annuals became 'a kind of business' for him during the economic slump of the late 1820s. Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books contains some of Hogg's finest short stories (for example 'The Cameronian Preacher's Tale' and 'Scottish Haymakers'), as well as some of his best-known poems (for example 'A Boy's Song' and 'The Sky Lark'). This volume highlights a coherent part of Hogg's total literary output, and in doing so provides new insights into an area of nineteenth-century publishing history that is attracting increasing interest and attention.Hogg was a professional writer with an acute awareness of the shifting trends of the literary marketplace during the 1820s and 1830s, when annuals were at their peak of popularity. However, his literary objectives did not always match the needs of the annuals, and as a result some of his contributions were returned as unsuitable for a family-oriented audience. Hogg's sometimes complex negotiations with the editors and publishers of the annuals are meticulously documented in Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books. In this context, the volume (for example) reprints both Hogg's manuscript version of 'What is Sin?', and the version actually published in Ackermann' |