London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1792

London, Company of Stationers, 1792.
1 vol. (35 x 55 mm) of [24] pp. Red morocco with ornate decoration on covers.

A delightful London calendar for 1792, showing sunrise, sunset and public holidays. The volume also contains a table of the reigns of the kings and queens of England and Great Britain, from William the Conqueror to George III, a list of the lords mayors and sheriffs from 1769 to 1792, the conversion rates for various currencies and the dates of the eclipses of the year.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, generally known as the Stationers’ Company, is one of the City of London’s corporations. Its members were mainly involved in the visual and graphic communications industries: printing, stationery, office products, advertising, and the publishing of books, newspapers and periodicals. Every year, the company published its almanacs, little booklets intended for society, giving them the essential information on the ephemeris.

The almanacs were printed by the company itself, and then entrusted to bookbinders who covered them with a delicate leather binding, as shown here.

It was these publications that gave rise to the fashion for even smaller and more luxurious‘Bijoux almanachs’, produced in London and Paris from 1815 onwards. ‘A series of fully engraved almanacs of exceptional quality, which are veritable miracles of engraving, illustration, binding and presentation […]. The illustrations include portraits of sovereigns and statesmen, biblical figures, views of buildings and landscapes, etc. […]. […]. A high degree of sophistication was achieved in their presentation, by publishing them in delicately coloured and stamped flexible boards, in elegant and splendidly decorated morocco or vellum bindings, sometimes protected by matching slipcases’ (Bondy, in Livres miniatures).