1) The Ladies Diary: Or, the Woman’s Almanack. SOLD
The ladies diary: or, the woman’s almanack, for the year of our Lord, 1718. Being the second after bissextile, or leap-year. Containing many delightful and entertaining particulars, peculiarly adapted for the use and diversion of the fair-sex. Being the fifteenth almanac ever publish’d of that kind.
[London] : Printed by J. Wilde, for the Company of Stationers, 1718. ESTC No.T58222
Octavo Physical description[16], 23, [1] p. : ill. ; 8⁰.
Originally compiled by John Tipper. Edited from 1714-1743 This edition was edited by Henry Beighton. [see note below]
“Title within simple woodcut border; center features an oval copper-plate engraving portrait frontispiece of Queen Anne, facing right, signed in the plate by M. Vandergucht. Surrounding text includes verses praising the female sex. Printed by J. Wilde for the Company of Stationers, 1718.”
2) Great Britain’s diary: or, the union-almanack for the year of our Lord 1718.
London : printed by J. Roberts, for the Company of Stationers, [1718] ESTC No.T57793
3) Parker, George, 1654-1743.
Parker’s ephemeris for the year of our Lord 1718.
London : printed by the author, for the Company of Stationers, 1117 [i.e. 1718]
ESTC No.: T28660
4) Moore, Francis, 1657-1714.
Vox stellarum; being an almanack for the year of human redemption 1718
London : printed by Tho. Wood and Tho. Sharpe, for the Company of Stationers, 1718.
ESTC No.: T16860
5) Gadbury, Job, -1715.
Ephemeris: or, a diary astronomical, astrological, meteorological, for the year of our Lord, 1718
London : printed by T. W. for the Company of Stationers, 1718. ESTC No.: T181326)
6) William Andrews active 1656-1683.
Great news from the stars: or, an ephemeris for the year 1718. With Observations upon the Eclipses, Solar Ingresses and Configurations of Heaven happening therein. Being the Second after Bissextile, or Leap-Year. And from the Creation of the World, according to the best of History, 5667 Years. Wherein You have an Account of many Things about the Heavenly Bodies, and their Portents in the same year, with some other very Considerable Matters. By William Andrews, Student in Astrology.
London : printed by J. Wilde, for the Company of Stationers, 1718. ESTC No.: T26929
7) Coley, Henry, 1633-1695?.
Merlinus Anglicus junior: or, the starry messenger for the year of human redemption, 1718
London : printed by L. Beardwell, for the Company of Stationers, 1718. ESTC No.: T16953
8) John Partridge1644-1715
Merlinus liberatus. An almanack for the year of our blessed Saviour’s incarnation 1718.
London : printed by J. Roberts, for the Company of Stationers, [1718] ESTC No.: T17014
9) Richard Saunders 1613-1675.
Apollo Anglicanus: the English apollo.
London : printed by J. Wilde, for the Company of Stationers, 1718.
ESTC No.: T17700
10) John Wing
Olympia dōmata ; or, an almanack for the year of our Lord God 1718. … By John Wing (Lacking 2 text leaves: C1 &C2 London : printed by J. Dawks, for the Company of Stationers, 1718.
ESTC No.: T28565
11) Winstanley, William, 1628?-1698.
Poor Robin 1718. An Almanack of the Old and New Fashion.
London : printed by W. Bowyer for the Company of Stationers, 1718. ESTC No.: T17600
¶
Eleven duodecimos (15 × 9.6 cm), separately printed almanacs, uniformly bound in a contemporary full dark blue Morrocco binding richly tooled with an interlaced monogram surmounted by a crown, all edges gilt. Each title retains its contemporary tax stamp and is separated by a narrow vellum index-tab extending beyond the fore-edge in an elegant, curled tab, allowing each work to be opened independently. A remarkably handsome survival. Ex libris Professor, Astronomer, Historian & Bibliophile Owen Gingerich.
The binding belongs to a recognizable group of English almanac bindings decorated with royal ciphers. It is contemporary dark blue morocco, the covers ruled in gilt and tooled at each corner with an unusually finely cut crowned GR royal cipher, the same tool repeated in the compartments of the spine; all edges gilt. In a volume assembled for 1718, the GR cipher is appropriate to the reign of George I (1714–1727).
A comparison is a sammelband of ten English almanacs for 1713 at the Folger Shakespeare Library, bound in contemporary morocco with a derivative of Queen Anne’s royal cipher, likewise impressed at the corners of the covers and repeated in the spine compartments. The Folger binding has been tentatively associated with the workshop of Jane Steel, daughter of the bookbinder Robert Steel, became free of the Stationers’ Company by patrimony in 1712 and continued the Steel binding workshop after her father’s death. Robert Steel had himself been apprenticed to the celebrated Restoration binder Samuel Mearne. The Folger volume’s date, contents, arrangement of the royal-cipher tools, and function as a bound collection of contemporary almanacs make it a particularly suggestive precedent for the present volume. The refined detail of the GR tool on this 1718 binding and the fine finishing is appropriate for the Mearne–Steel tradition.
For the Folger description see: https://catalog.folger.edu/record/357571?utm_
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The Ladies Diary was originally compiled by John Tipper, in 1704 and edited by him until his death in 1713 it is one of the earliest English periodicals directed toward women and one of the most remarkable publications of the eighteenth century. It was proceeded by two short lived periodicals the Ladies Mercury 1693/4 and the Ladies Journal 1693. While presented as a “woman’s almanack,” it soon developed into an influential forum for mathematical problems, scientific puzzles, and reader-submitted solutions, welcoming contributions from both women and men.
Henry Beighton assumed the editorship in 1713, mathematical problems increasingly dominated its pages, and by the 1720s the journal was publishing sophisticated problems informed by Newtonian calculus. This 1718 issue, described on its title page as “the fifteenth almanac ever publish’d of that kind,” belongs to the formative years of a publication that helped foster popular mathematics and scientific culture throughout Britain. As Albree and Brown comment “ The Diary when founded in 1704, was one of England’s ‘modern’ Almacks. For instance, Tipper never gave any Meteorogical predictions, and in a specific Preface, Tipper’s successor left no doubt that “the Astrological-Cant of telling News and Fortunes, and Prognostications of the Weather” would be foreign to this publication” (Costa 2000)
As a teaching object, the volume lends itself particularly well to direct comparison. Eleven almanacs for the same year can be opened side by side to examine how substantially their contents and intended audiences differ. The Ladies’ Diary, with its mathematical questions, reader contributions, and deliberate rejection of astrological prognostication, can be compared directly with the astronomical and astrological ephemerides of Parker, Moore, Gadbury, Andrews, Coley, Partridge, Saunders, and Wing.
Poor Robin, with its reference to the “Old and New Fashion,” offers another contemporary approach to the calendar. Throughout the volume, astronomical tables, eclipses, planetary movements, prognostications, practical information, and advertisements for medicines and remedies document the extraordinary range of material communicated to a broad reading public through the familiar annual almanac. Preserved together, the eleven little books provide a compact contemporary cross-section of what different readers could find—and expect to find—in an English almanac in 1718.
References: ESTC; Maslen & Lancaster, The Bowyer Ledgers;
Shelley Costa, “The Ladies’ Diary: Gender, Mathematics, and Civil Society in Early-Eighteenth-Century England,” Osiris, 2nd ser., 17 (2002), pp. 49–73.
Joe Albree & Scott H. Brown “A valuable monument of Mathmatical genius”; Historica Mathematica 36 (2009) 10-14
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