1822. 24mo, pp. [vi] blank, [iv] engraved frontispiece and title-page, 96, [6] blank; printed in red and black; faint dampstain affecting margins of engraved frontispiece and title-page, text lightly browned with some occasional minor soiling; a number of ink and pencil entries in the memorandum, seemingly in a single neat hand; in contemporary red morocco, with attractive silver clasp (still working), with front inner pocket, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, with pencil holder (though pencil missing), covers a little scuffed and soiled, with light wear to extremities, but still an attractive copy. A most appealing pocket memorandum book in the original wallet binding with a silver clasp, issued by one of the leading pocket-book makers of the day, William Peacock, based in Salisbury Square London. There is increasing focus of study upon such pocket diary-cum-almanacs, which though at the time were widely purchased and used, became somewhat ‘invisible’ with the passing of time and neglected by academic study. Attractively printed, and with an elegantly engraved frontispiece depicting William IV landing at Torbay (E. F Burney. Del, S. Springsguth, sculp), the present example includes a blank diary section of pp. 52 corresponding to the weeks of the year, further divided into 7 boxes for each day. The inclusion of a finely executed frontispiece was a particular feature of the genre, and indeed between 1790-1809 Humphrey Repton supplied tiny watercolour views for Peacock’s other series, The Polite Repository. Though sadly anonymous, there are a number of entries in both pencil and ink, seemingly in more than one hand, and which includes a number of contact details and address (both in London and Paris), including for French and music teachers, a doctor, seamstresses, a hairdresser, laundress, upholsterer, restaurants, and hotels. Some of the notes date to the period 1826-1827.
A stationer and bookbinder, Peacock seems to have begun trading in 1779, later trading as William Peacock and Sons, and then as Peacock and Bampton between 1811-1827. ‘Peacock appears to have been one of the leading pocket-book makers. He published the untraced Historical Almanack, a cheaper pocket diary, advertised for the first time in November 1793 and 'ornamented with an elegant Frontispiece,' which appears to have run and been advertised up until at least 1837. [...] Apart from producing pocket books, Peacock was also active as a tanner, likely preparing some of the leather he would use in his bindings...’ (Sandro Jung, ‘Illustrated Pocket Diaries and the Commodification of Culture’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 2013, 37(2), pp. 53-84.) ‘the eighteenth-century illustrated pocket diary-cum-almanac is a largely neglected ephemeral genre, partly because it has, in Margaret J. M. Ezell’s term, remained “invisible”. Even though annual publications such as Thomas Baker’s Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas and William Peacock’s Polite Repository were once widely known and familiar to those who could afford them, their absence from historical narratives of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century print culture, the history of the book, and publishing represents a significant gap in accounts of the consumption of printed ephemera. Too often, copies of these pocket books have been preserved largely because of who their owners were or because of the socio-cultural records they contain on day-to-day life in the period. In that regard, they have not been considered as important interventions in a sizeable market for illustrated pocket books the study of which will contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of processes of commodification, marketing, branding, and cultural production’ (ibid.)