Description
[Almanac] The Oxford Almanack for the Year of Our Lord God M.DCCC.XCVIII. With a blue collotype headpiece titled, “St. Mary’s Church from the Gate of the President’s Lodgings, Corpus Christi College.” Printed at the Clarendon Press, by Horace Hart, M.A., Printer to the University; — and published by Henry Frowde, M.A., Oxford University Press Warehouse, Amen Corner, London, E.C. [1897]. A rare surviving broadside almanac and Oxford University calendar for the year 1898, measuring 79 cm x 56 cm. The headpiece is 26 cm x 39 cm. Collotype signed and dated in the plate “Geo. C. Haité. 1897”.
George Charles Haité was asked by George Newnes to provide the cover illustration for his new magazine, The Strand Magazine, in 1890 for the magazine’s launch in 1891. With the title lettering of the magazine artfully suspended from telegraph wires strung across the street, the novel image became iconic to the era, and the magazine got a powerful boost to its circulation with the publication of Conan Doyle’s Scandal in Bohemia in July 1891. George Charles Haité (1855-1924) was a member of The Sette of Odd Volumes, and the moving founder of the London Sketch Club.
Below the image, “St. Mary’s Church from the Gate of the President’s Lodgings, Corpus Christi College,” enclosed in a black border, is an eight-column calendar for 1898, giving the University Officers and Heads of College in the first column and the professors by discipline in the eighth column. The center six column (columns two to seven) are double columns and comprise the calendar for each of the twelve months of the University year.
The condition is very good, with only a trace of puckering from moisture and also of damp-staining along the bottom margin, affecting neither text nor image.
