Children's Annuals

[callmemadam]

There are some nice pictures on the AbeBooks site today.

AbeBooks: Beautiful Vintage Annuals for Children

I have quite a few annuals like this one:



I doubt very much if I could sell it for the sort of price the Abe dealers ask.
I also have Girl, Girls' Crystal and School Friend annuals, plus a selection by Blackie, Oxford, Warne, Selfridge and other quite old ones. Any favourites? I like some of the Collins' annuals, which have book-length stories from their author stable. Collins were great recyclers. You'll often find annual covers reproduced from colour plates in books. TBH I have too many annuals as I can't resist buying them for a pound. One of my best buys was a lovely copy of The Rose Book for Girls. The 'colour' series was really pretty.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I've just been re- reading some of my Collins Magazine Annuals. The standard of fiction writing is really high, but I'm amazed at the ratio of boy-centric stories to girl-centred ones, I haven't counted, but I think it's about six to one yet Collins Magazine was advertised as for 'boys and girls'. Anyway thank-you for the blog, it's brought me an enormous amount of pleasure since I discovered it (and you!) three years ago

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I have quite a few Elizabethan magazines but just one Collins Magazine Annual. I love the John Verney illustrations. I hadn't thought of the magazine as boy-centric but I'm sure you're right.

Thank you for your kind comments!

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

Rupert and Beano annuals for me when I was younger, then School Friend and also Judy and Bunty annuals when they arrived in the early 60s. I progressed to Boyfriend annuals as a teenager :)

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I'm too old to have read Boyfriend :-)

[gwendraith.livejournal.com]

Are you? I'd have said not :)

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Flattering, but I am a few years older than you!

Annuals

[(Anonymous)]

I loved both School Friend and Girl, and now have all the School Friend annuals I had in the 1950s.
I also had Young Elizabethan magazine in the 1950s (only managed to find 3 on Abe some years ago, but they were £10 each and I couldn't really justify buying more although at the time there were several for sale.)
And who remembers Honey magazine, the teenage magazine for girls which was first published around 1958/9? I never see any copies of that anywhere.

Re: Annuals

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I loved Honey! Unfortunately, copies from the 1960s rarely come up for sale and are very expensive when they do.

I've seen Young Elizabethan magazines on ebay for much less than £10.00 each, so it's worth looking there.

[feather-ghyll.livejournal.com]

I have a selection of all sorts, but these days I try to resist buying any unless if there's a story by an author that I really like.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

How disciplined! I tend to say,'Oh, it's only a pound and I can give it away again'. Somehow it stays. I do love the illustrations in some of the older annuals.

[feather-ghyll.livejournal.com]

I'm not that disciplined when it comes to other things! It's partly that I generally prefer longer stories and also the physical size of annuals.