Category:The Keepsake

Title(s)

The Keepsake (1828-1857)

Editor(s)

Harrison Ainsworth (1827)

Frederic Mansel Reynolds (1829-1835)

Caroline Norton (1835-1836)

Emmeline Stuart (Lady) Wortley (1837-1840)

(Lady) Blessington (1841-1850)

Countess of Blessington (1841-1849)

Marguerite Power, with the help of Mrs. Newton Crosland (1849+)

Overview

The Keepsake was an annual produced in England from 1828 to 1857. Each volume included a collection of short stories and poems with accompanying illustrations. The Keepsake maintained a conservative moral theme.^[1] It was mainly marketed to middle-class women and was often intended to be given to them as an elegant and esteemed gift, thereby becoming an actual “keepsake.”^[2] During its time, The Keepsake was meant to provide enjoyable reading and to “live, a reputed and standard work in every well-selected library.”^[3]

The first annual, released in 1828, explains the editor’s intention to keep the authors anonymous: the editor was motivated by “a regard to the wishes of individuals . . . and partly from an inclination to risk the several articles on their own merits, unaided by the previous reputation of the writers.”^[4] However, the subsequent 1829 edition lists all of the authors by name, occasionally referencing one of their more well-known works in place of their name.^[5] From 1829 on, author names are listed, with the exception of the 1838 edition, in which all written works are anonymous. Some names are intermittently taken out or replaced by initials from 1831 until The Keepsake’s end in 1857. These inconsistencies could be the result of frequently changing editors and yearlong interims between releases. Some of the named notable contributors include Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Moore, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

For Further Reading

“The Keepsake,” The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800-1900, Series 2, Ed. John S. North, Waterloo, Ont: North Waterloo Academic Press, Web, 23 May 2015.

Ledbetter, Kathryn. "Domesticity Betrayed: The Keepsake Literary Annual." Victorian Newsletter 99(2001 Spring):16-24. Print.

Manning, Peter. "Wordsworth in the Keepsake, 1829." Literature in the Marketplace. Ed. John O. Jordan and Robert L. Patten. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 44-73. Print.

Notes

1. ↑ “Introduction to "The Keepsake",” rc,umd,edu, The University of Maryland, n,d, Web, 21 May 2015.
2. ↑ “Introduction to "The Keepsake",” rc,umd,edu, The University of Maryland, n,d, Web, 21 May 2015.
3. ↑ “The Keepsake,” The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800-1900, Series 2, Ed. John S. North, Waterloo, Ont: North Waterloo Academic Press, Web, 6 May 2015.
4. ↑ William Harrison Ainsworth, Preface, "The Keepsake for 1828", London: Hurst, Chance, and Co, 1828., v-viii, Print.
5. ↑ “Introduction to "The Keepsake",” rc,umd,edu, The University of Maryland, n,d, Web, 21 May 2015.

Submitted by: Earl, Madelyn: section 1, Fall 2013

Submitted by: Holdaway, Chelsea: section 1, Fall 2014