6j A. I. R. Siegel, Hill & Co., ca. 1910.

Notes

The Lover’s Garland: Flowers of Love Culled from the Poets is a Victorian‑era poetry anthology of love poems selected from a range of earlier writers. It was published in London about 1880 by Leopold B. Hill and presented in a small, attractively bound volume of romantic and lyrical excerpts from various poets that thematically evoke love and affection. These kinds of anthologies were popular in the 19th century as gift books and sentimental keepsakes, gathering “flowers” of verse — a metaphor long used for curated poetry collections — into a single, portable volume that readers could enjoy or share as tokens of feeling.

Miniature books grew especially popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when improvements in printing, paper quality, and typesetting made it possible to produce readable texts at very small sizes. Their appeal blended novelty, craftsmanship, and collectability: readers enjoyed the surprise of fully functional books small enough to fit in a pocket, while collectors prized the fine bindings, gilt lettering, and clever design challenges they represented. Miniature volumes were often given as gifts or souvenirs and frequently featured well-known classics, poetry, or religious texts, since familiar works lent themselves well to abbreviated or compact formats. 

Description

Miniature. Brown suede binding. Gilt edges and gilt lettering on spine. Fading to spine. Fine condition.