1808: Miniature

Extremes

People are fascinated by extremes. What is the world's highest skyscraper? Where is the world's smallest house? What is the world's largest airplane? Who is the oldest human being on earth? Bibliophiles are interested in different facts. What is the most beautifully printed book? When was the first gilt-edged book produced? How many Gutenberg Bibles are there in the Netherlands? Very few collectors are interested in mammoth-sized books. Miniature books, on the other hands, are popular not only among people living in cramped quarters, or nomads wanting to carry every book they own in their jacket pocket. They're also greatly sought after by the well-housed, such as America's President Roosevelt.

Criterion

The criterion for determining whether a book is a miniature book is arbitrary. The collector and antiquarian Louis Bondy, who devoted almost his entire life to these kinds of little books, set his limits at 3 inches by 3 inches (76 x 76 mm). Almanacs were great favourites among publishers of miniature books. Because they were intended to be used as daily record books, they had to fit easily into jacket or trousers pockets or into a ladies' handbag.

Small, smaller, smallest

Printers and bookbinders saw the making of small books as a challenge, and competed with each other to come up with the smallest size. The Antwerp printer Christoffel Plantijn (1520-1589) produced the very rare Kalendarium Gregorianum (22 x 35 mm) in 1585. In England the London Almanack (26 x 57 mm) enjoyed 200 years of publication beginning in 1690, and was followed by innumerable Bijou almanacs. In the Netherlands the Kleine Tijdwijzer of Jufferlijke Almanach (33 x 66 mm) was published by Jan van Gulik at the end of the eighteenth century. Beautifully bound mini-almanacs were also being made in Germany and Austria, but France beats the lot. In 1760 the almanachs microscopiques first started turning up in Paris, where shopkeepers gave them as New Year's gifts to their best female customers.

Janet

The publisher Janet, located on the Rue St. Jacques, put dozens of minuscule almanacs on the market with the superfluous designation 'petit' in their titles, such as Le petit cadeau (1796), Le petit trésor (1798), Le petit chansonier (1800) and Le petit Nostradamus (1807). In an apparent effort to put an end to all discussion regarding what was the smallest almanac, he must have come up with an idea that would justify entitling one particular work Le plus petit des almanachs, but actually it was no smaller than the rest. Besides a real calendar, the book contains eight copperplates and a large number of very romantic maxims that undoubtedly appealed to the lovesick women of Paris. 'Mon coeur en amour est tendre, / heureux qui le prendre'!