About the Collection
Gift books, or gift annuals, are attractively bound and handsomely printed miscellanies of short works of contemporary literature including poems, short stories, passages of scripture and art by different creators. Women feature prominently as both the producers, purchasers, and consumers of gift books.
The books are typically octavo sized, with a smaller number appearing in larger quarto, smaller mini, and even periodical formats.
Title page from The Young Ladies' Offering of 1849
Gift books were, as the name suggests, wildly popular as gifts around the mid-19th century and the Oberlin College Libraries have well over one hundred of these, mostly from American publishers and frequently touting their American content. Most of our volumes came to the library through separate donors as books moved from homes and campus literary societies to the academic and local public libraries (both of which were housed together in the Carnegie Library on Oberlin's campus after 1908). Library staff of the time were very generous about accepting material donations of every description, even if the materials were dated or had no formal connection to the academic curriculum.
An engraving used in "Friendship's Offering 1842", edited by Mrs. C. H. W. Esling and published by Littlefield in Boston.
In practice these gift annuals have - until recently - proved of little interest to students other than when Special Collections staff have gone looking for early examples of color printing, velvety black mezzotints, and gift inscriptions from women. In their pursuit of pleasing novelty, gift books usefully function as sites of innovation in 19th-century printing technology, particularly the early occurrences of color printing of the decorated presentation plates which some books included.
Gift books were not inexpensive to own, and served as outward facing displays of affluence and gentility. From the publisher's and author's perspective, they were far more lucrative than stand-alone books of poetry. Interest within Special Collections took a leap forward in the spring of 2024 following their use by a student for research on a topic related to women and publishing. Many individual examples can be located using the phrase "gift books" as a subject heading, though the use of the phrase is not consistent.
Through the gift annuals we can observe women dominating a literary genre as writers, editors, and primary consumers. They may have used these books as overt signifiers of their growing wealth and personal intellect. In addition, gift annuals were marketed toward women, and the gendered, middle-class themes around which the collections revolve include femininity, domesticity, the arts, morality, piety, motherhood, and marriage.
The content of these pages was written by Ed Vermue, aided by the earnest interest and research of Elsa Friedmann OC '2024.