Christmas gift-books and holiday stories:The rise and demise of lucrative markets for nineteenth-century authors

A cover of The Token and
Atlantic Souvenir: a Christmas
and New Year's present (c. 1852)
Courtesy of the Library Company

An 1895 article in The Publishers’ Weekly notes the passing of a trend that had lasted most of the century: “Sets of an authors’ works or a special work profusely and artistically illustrated have almost entirely superseded the old-fashioned Christmas gift-books so largely at one time a feature of the holiday publishing season.” Initially a British development, these “old-fashioned” Christmas annuals spread to America early during the early 1800s. Their heyday was the first half of the century, although a number of them continued to be published until the 1860s, and attempts to resuscitate them continued until the early 1900s. A century ago, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature emphasized their importance to American literary history by devoting an entire chapter to Christmas gift-books: “Almost or quite all of those published in America were literary miscellanies, the contents being original, or, in case of some of the cheaper volumes, ‘selected.’”

Most of the material published in the annuals was what we would describe as “down-market,” but, attracted by the lucrative pay, many prominent authors were featured as well. William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Edgar Allan Poe, Lydia H. Sigourney, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier all contributed to annuals. (In fact, many of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales first appeared in holiday gift-books.) Because the annuals were meant to be read—and sold—all year, the contents were rarely seasonal; readers didn’t buy holiday annuals for Christmas stories.

The rise of the holiday story was instead a separate, later development; as the annuals waned, seasonally themed issues of magazines provided an alternative source of income for authors. Penne L. Restad, in her book Christmas in America, puzzles over how initially these stories “appeared only sporadically and during seemingly odd times of the year. Harper’s Monthly, for example, made its first reference to Christmas in a poem, ‘The Approach of Christmas,’ in its August 1850 issue. Godey’s first literary tribute to the holiday, ‘A Christmas Hymn,’ ran in February of 1841.” Indeed, the grandfather of the American Christmas story, Washington Irving, published his famous sketches as part of the serially-published Sketch Book. His four holiday pieces—“Christmas,” “The Stage Coach,” “Christmas Eve,” and “Christmas Day”—originally appeared in January 1820—and they were not published until July in England. (In the English and subsequent American editions, the fourth piece was split into two: “Christmas Morning” and “The Christmas Dinner.”)

Eventually, however, magazines began publishing Christmas-themed stories, recipes, and illustrations in their December issues every year. By 1865 their prominence was notable enough that Mark Twain would publish a devastating parody, “The Christmas Fireside (for Good Little Boys and Girls),” in the December 23, 1863, issue of The Californian. In a study of Kate Chopin’s career, Emily Toth writes, “The market for conversion and happily-ever-after stories for Christmas and Easter was immense. It was also one of the best sources of income and recognition for professional writers.” It was a Christmas story that first brought Chopin to the attention of a national audience when it was syndicated by the American Press Association.

Like the Christmas gift-books that preceded them, magazine issues devoted to holiday stories have virtually vanished; with occasional exceptions, Christmas-themed fiction seems to have been largely relegated to the children’s literature market or, less frequently, to “regular” issues of literary magazines. When William Maxwell published a Christmas story in 1986 (“The Lily-White Boys”), it appeared in the Summer-Fall issue of The Paris Review.

With best wishes to our readers for a happy and healthy holiday season, we present three selections for Christmas from Story of the Week:

Washington Irving, “The Christmas Dinner” (1820)
Irving’s alter-ego Geoffrey Crayon is invited to Bracebridge Hall for an old-fashioned English Christmas celebration.

Mark Twain, “The Christmas Fireside (for Good Little Boys and Girls)” (1865)
An impishly wicked story about the monstrously wicked little boy to whom only good things happened.

William Maxwell, “The Lily-White Boys” (1986)
Arriving home to a ransacked townhouse after a lovely Christmas party, a married couple experiences a moment of grace.

Elizabeth L. Bradley on Washington Irving’s greatest contribution to American letters: the New York story

Elizabeth L. Bradley pays tribute to Washington Irving
at the New York Writers Hall of Fame gala
Ryan Brenizer Photography

Reader’s Almanac continues its presentation of remarks offered at the New York State Writers Hall of Fame induction ceremony with Elizabeth L. Bradley’s tribute to Washington Irving. Bradley is the author of Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York and the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Washington Irving’s A History of New York.

According to Wiki Answers, Washington Irving is the “Father of the American Short Story.” While Irving, a lifelong bachelor, might have been tickled by this paternity suit, I’m not sure he would have appreciated the glib assumption. To be the father suggests that other nineteenth-century American writers, his literary descendants, are the actual masters of the form. I can already guess which names are leaping to your mind: Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Chopin, James, Crane. And that seems to be always the way with Irving—his is the name in parentheses—the prequel, the run-up. “Yes, of course, Irving, and then the fun begins!”

But, in fact, the fun began with Irving. He gave us the original American dreamers, Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane, and set their delicious fantasies against a transcendental backdrop—the “fairy mountains” of the Catskills—that prodded us, gently but firmly, to see ghosts and dream dreams of our own. His New York tales transformed a new country into an ancient wilderness, layered with meaning and larded with stories. Before Thomas Cole ever made his way up the river, Irving was the Hudson River School.

He also brought the American frontier to life for readers without steam engines, and seduced Americans into a love affair with the Alhambra, which is still evident in Spain’s contemporary veneration for the Bard of Sunnyside. He was a crusader for author’s rights and strong copyright protection centuries before the Author’s Guild. He dubbed our city “Gotham,” and he may (with apologies to Thomas Nash) have invented the American Santa Claus.

No one would fault me, I think, for stopping there. But I revere Irving for still another innovation: his “temporary jeu d’esprit,” the History of New York, which made the twenty-six-year-old satirist famous and gave us a narrator unlike any other: Diedrich Knickerbocker, a grumpy know-it-all with a fondness for street food and deep roots in the neighborhood—in other words, a real New Yorker! During Irving’s lifetime, Knickerbocker was the genealogist of the Hudson River Valley, studying “with the zeal of a bookworm” any “genuine Dutch families snugly shut up in their low-roofed farmhouses.” He was the narrator of every Dutch tale you hold dear from your childhood—they are all from his pen—but he is also the emblem of Irving’s greatest contribution to American letters: the New York story. The combination of delight and mockery that marked the History has become the vernacular of centuries of New York storytellers, who share Irving’s belief in the singularity of the New York experience, and his mission to share that experience with the larger world. From the works of Herman Melville and Walt Whitman to those of Paula Fox and Jonathan Lethem, New York stories owe much to Irving’s first satirical ode to the city. We may choose not to cheer on the Knicks, but as readers, writers, and New Yorkers, we must always salute the Knickerbockers.

Irving’s great New York stories are collected in volume #16 of the Library of America series, Washington Irving: History, Tales, & Sketches, edited by James W. Tuttleton.

At its June 5 ceremony in midtown Manhattan, The Empire State Center for the Book formally inducted 14 writers into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, which it established in 2010 to recognize New York-based poets, novelists, journalists, and historians who have made an indelible mark on our culture. The class of 2012 included E. L. Doctorow, Pete Hamill, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom attended. Also honored were John Cheever, Hart Crane, Edna Ferber, Washington Irving, Henry James, Mary McCarthy, Marianne Moore, Barbara W. Tuchman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Wright.

Previous posts from the Hall of Fame ceremony:
Alice Quinn on Marianne Moore
Jessica Tuchman Mathews on Barbara W. Tuchman
Langdon Hammer on Hart Crane

Washington Irving and the model for Rebecca in Ivanhoe

Born in Philadelphia in 1781, Rebecca Gratz began her philanthropic career at twenty when she helped establish the first of many organizations to help the needy. A devout Jew, Gratz founded the first Sunday school for Hebrew children in America in 1838. One of her brother’s closest friends was Washington Irving and Gratz’s own dearest friend was Matilda Hoffman, the object of Irving’s first, last, and only love. This shared affection—Matilda died at eighteen in her friend Rebecca’s arms—formed a lifelong bond.

So it was that when Irving visited Sir Walter Scott in 1817 and the conversation turned to his host’s next novel. According to an unsourced (and still unconfirmed) article by Graetz van Rensselaer, “The Original of Rebecca in Ivanhoe,” in an 1882 issue of Century Magazine, Irving had a ready recommendation for the model for a character.

During one of their many conversations, when personal and family affairs were the topics, Irving spoke of his own, and Miss Hoffman’s cherished friend, Rebecca Gratz, of Philadelphia, described her wonderful beauty, related the story of her firm adherence to her religious faith under the most trying circumstances, and particularly illustrated her loveliness of character and zealous philanthropy. Scott was deeply interested and impressed, and conceived the plan of embodying the pure, moral sentiment, that like a thread of silver ran through the story. Although “Rob Roy” was then unfinished, he was already revolving in his mind the plot and characters of “Ivanhoe.” He immediately determined to introduce a Jewish female character, and, on the strength of Irving’s vivid description, he named his heroine Rebecca.

Susan Sklaroff writes an ongoing and engaging blog about the life of Rebecca Gratz in which quotes from Irving frequently appear. Here’s a recent entry about the fad in 1802 of keeping engagements and even weddings secret:

There is nothing that seems more strange and preposterous to me than the manner in which modern marriages are conducted. The parties keep the matter as secret as if there was something disgraceful about the connexion . . . they sneak into matrimony as quietly as possible, and seem to pride themselves on the cunning and ingenuity they have displayed in their maneuvers.

Related LOA works: Washington Irving: Fiction, Tales, and Historical Works