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THE WIDE AWAKE GIFT Know Nothing Token On the second title page: This Gift is Fraternally Dedicted to the Sons and Daughters Of America, as a Token of Filial Affection for our Common Mother, whose Beauty, unlike that of other Mothers, increases with Her Years, and Her Strength with the Number of Her Children. $175.00 + $7.95 shipping & handling |
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This auction is for an original 1855 FIRST EDITION of "THE WIDE AWAKE GIFT: KNOW-NOTHING TOKEN FOR 1855," edited by "ONE OF 'EM, " published by J.C. Derby. The book is a collection of speeches, essays, poems and more supporting the KNOW-NOTHING's keep America "AMERICAN" point of view. During the nineteenth century, and especially between 1830 and 1860, gift books, beautifully designed, illustrated volumes of poetry and prose, were significant components of upper-middle-class reading culture. Created by publishers to be given as gifts or purchased for home library collections, gift books were designed to be seen as well as read and signaled a kind of middle-class taste and respectability that other fiction did not carry. Parents and grandparents would give gift volumes and annuals to children, and other adults would purchase them for family libraries. The illustrations in these volumes provide present-day readers with a sense of the literary and artistic tastes and cultural values of mid-nineteenth-century America. Both the illustrations and the text are sentimental, and pages from gift books repeatedly show tranquil scenes of mothers surrounded by children, creating the impression that nineteenth-century white middle-class homes revolved around well-ordered, mother-centered domestic spheres. In the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, the illustrations included in gift books and annual volumes of periodicals shifted from engravings of landscapes to portraits of human subjects and paintings of domestic scenes. Some political groups used the popularity of the "gift-book" form to forward specific causes or special interests. The Wide Awake Gift: A Know-Nothing Token, supported the Know-Nothing Party, a party that rose to prominence in the middle of the 1850s. The title page states that it is "edited by 'One of Em' and also has the motto "Put None but Americans on Guard to-night." The Know-Nothing Party, the byname of an American Political Party that flourished in the 1850s was an outgrowth of the strong anti-immigrant and especially anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that started to manifest itself during the 1840s. A rising tide of immigrants, primarily Germans in the Midwest and Irish in the East, seemed to pose a threat to the economic and political security of native-born Protestant Americans. This is most dominant in its theme. The fear of immigrants is an ever present theme today. The editor of this publication is not named, but pieces by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Cullen Bryant appear as representative American pieces alongside spiritual and patriotic influences such as “The Bible”, "The Star Spangled Banner," the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. This volume contains several illustrations, including engravings of portraits of Daniel Webster and Martha Washington, signed by the engraver J. C. Buttre. |
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THE WAY TO PEACE by Margaret Deland Illustrations by Alice Barber Stevens Publisher, Harper & Brothers 1910 $30.00 + FREE shipping |
 "Athalia had a fancy, in the warm twilight, for walking down lonely Lake Road." |
 Title Page |
 Every page has elaborate pale green floral design border. |
 Inscription: a gift to a friend, 1911 |
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