Category:The New Year's Gift and Juvenile Souvenir

Title: The New Year’s Gift and Juvenile Souvenir

Editor: Priscilla Maden Watts

Publisher: Samuel Manning and Co.

The New Year’s Gift and Juvenile Souvenir was an annual publication that ran between the years 1829 and 1836, ending with its eighth volume. It was edited by Priscilla Maden Watts, wife of the accomplished writer and editor Alaric Watts, from London. Mrs. Alaric Watts oversaw the process of finding writers, poets, and artists to contribute to the annual, which was published in Middlesex, London. Wishing to inculcate morals and values into her young audience, Mrs. Watts published sentimental fiction along with histories of people with clear morals and didactic messages.

The contents of The New Year’s Gift and Juvenile Souvenir include short stories, referred to by the editor as “tales [or] sketches,” and poetry, which sought to teach children between the ages of six and twelve the virtues of moral living. The protagonists of the stories and poems are often children met with some kind of peril or dilemma who must learn from their mistakes, trials, and disobedience. Some of the short entries are based roughly on history and frequently include the words “A True Story” in their titles. The selection of the material avoided the fantastical elements of storytelling that many young readers enjoy, as evidenced in the preface: “giants, ghosts, and fairies have been entirely banished from her pages, as tending not only to enervate the infant mind, and unfit it for the reception of more wholesome nutriment, but also to increase the superstitious terrors of childhood.”^[1]

The purpose of The New Year’s Gift and Juvenile Souvenir was to teach children morality, not to entertain them with illusions. A variety of French steel engravings by "minor artists" appear throughout the volume, illustrating the events of the tales and poems.^[2]

Notes

1. ↑ Mrs. Alaric Watts, "Preface," The New Year's Gift and Juvenile Souvenir 1 (1829): vi-vii, Web, 24 Feb 2010.
2. ↑ DNB.

Submitted by: Call, Ashley: section 1, Winter 2010

Wiggins, Andrew: section 1, Winter 2010