The Book Of Days - A Miscellany Of Popular Antiquities
In Connection With The Calendar Including Anecdote, Biography, & History Curiosities Of Literature & Oddities Of Human Life & Character.
Edited by R. Chambers
Published by W. & R. Chambers: London & Edinburgh 1878
Complete 2 Volume Set In Original Leather Bindings
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The Book of Days is one of the great Victorian compilations of folklore, customs, history and popular culture, bringing together an extraordinary wealth of information arranged according to the calendar year. Edited by Robert Chambers, the work explores the significance of individual days, months and seasons, recording the festivals, traditions, superstitions and commemorations that shaped everyday life in Britain and beyond. Richly anecdotal and endlessly fascinating, it serves as both a reference work and a treasure-house of historical curiosities.
Drawing upon literature, biography, local history and antiquarian research, Chambers fills the pages with accounts of famous events, remarkable personalities, forgotten customs and peculiar episodes from the past. Subjects range from saints' days, royal anniversaries and ancient festivals to folk beliefs, criminal oddities, literary anecdotes and eccentric characters. The result is a vivid portrait of social history, preserving a vast body of knowledge that might otherwise have been lost to time and offering modern readers a unique window into nineteenth-century scholarship and historical storytelling.
Published by W. & R. Chambers in 1878, this complete two-volume edition is profusely illustrated throughout with hundreds of finely engraved images, decorative title pages and historical scenes. Handsomely bound in original leather with marbled endpapers, the set represents one of the most ambitious and enduring works of Victorian antiquarian literature, equally appealing to collectors of folklore, social history, genealogy and beautifully illustrated nineteenth-century books."
