History in Miniature

Some call the 19th century the Golden Age of miniature and pocketbooks in Britain—advances in printing made it possible to produce readable books at a compact yet mass-produceable scale. Many such works were miniaturized for practical use. Some were devotional, to be used in daily worship outside formal church settings. Another common theme was etiquette books, which provided guidance in how to speak, dress, and behave according to social expectations of those times. Among the most influential publishers of the time was William Pickering, whose Diamond Classics series quite literally brought canonical literature into the palms of many contemporary Britons, of which several volumes are included here. 

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