The exclusive right to sell "almanacs and prognostications" in England, enjoyed in the time of Elizabeth by two members of the Company of Stationers, was extended by James I. to the two universities and the Stationers' Company jointly; but the universities commuted their privilege for an annuity from the company. This monopoly was challenged by Thomas Carnan, a bookseller, who published an almanac for three successive years, after having been thrice imprisoned on that account by the company. The case came, in 1775, before the court of common pleas, and was decided in Carnan's favour, the question argued being, "Whether almanacs were such public ordinances, such matters of state, as belonged to the king by his prerogative, so as to enable him to communicate an exclusive right of printing them to a grantee of the crown?" In 1779 Lord North attempted to reverse this decision by a parliamentary enactment, but the bill was thrown out. In consequence of this the universities lost their title to their annuity, and in lieu of it they received a parliamentary grant. The company, however, virtually retained its monopoly for many years, by buying up as much as possible all the almanacs issued by other publishers, but in more recent times this power has altogether ceased, although a considerable proportion of the almanacs published in England still issue from the hall of the Stationers' Company. A description of "Almanac Day" at Stationers' Hall will be found in Knight's Cyclopaedia of London (1851), p. 588.
On the 1st of January 1828 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge issued the British Almanac for that year--a publication greatly superior in every way to the almanacs of the time. The success of the British Almanac, with its valuable supplement, the Companion to the Almanac, led to a great improvement in this class of publications. The Stationers' Company issued the Englishman's Almanac, a work of a similar kind. The entire repeal in 1834, by the 3rd and 4th Will. IV. c. 57, of the heavy stamp duty, first imposed in 1710, on all almanacs of fifteenpence per copy, gave an additional stimulus to the publication of almanacs of a better class, and from that time the number has greatly increased. Since 1870, the British Almanac and Companion have been the principal almanacs published by the Stationers' Company. Whitaker's Almanac, commenced in 1868 by Joseph Whitaker (1820-1895), is perhaps the best known of modern almanacs.
In Scotland, almanacs containing much astrological matter appcared to have been published at about the beginning of the 16th century; and about a century later those published at Aberdeen enjoyed considerable reputation. In 1683, the Edinburgh's True Alnnanack, or a New Prognostication, appeared; a publication which improved with years and was issued after 1837 as Oliver and Boyd's New Edinburgh Almanac, a standard book of reference for Scottish affairs. Thom's Irish Almanac (since 1843) deals mainly with Ireland.
The earliest almanac published in the United States is probably to be ascribed to Bradford's press in Philadelphia, for the year 1587. Poor Richard's Almanac, commenced in 1732 by Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym of "Richard Saunders," and continued by him for twenty-five years, gained a high reputation for its wise and witty sayings; it may have been suggested by a somewhat similar publication by Thomas, of Dedham, Massachusetts. The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge was published at Boston from 1828 to 1861; a continuation, The National Almanac, was published only twice, for 1863 and 1864. The Old Farmer's Almanac enjoys considerable popularity and has been published for many years. At the present time nearly every religious denomination, trade and newspaper have almanacs or year-books.
In France prophetic almanacs circulated very freely among the poorer and rural classes, although an ordonnance of Charles IX. required the seal of a diocesan bishop on all almanacs. In 1579 Henry III. prohibited the publication of predictions relating to political events, a prohibition renewed by Louis XIII. Of such almanacs, the most famous was the Almanach Liegeois first published in 1625 at Liege by Matthieu Laensbergh, a person of very problematic existence. Publications of this class subsequently increased in number to such an extent that, in 1852, their circulation was forcibly checked by the government. The most important French almanac is the Almanach Royal, afterwards Imperial, and now National, first published in 1679.
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This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. See the encyclopedia main page for disclaimer and copyright information.
