Booksby Press

I was asked yesterday about miniature books produced in Hungary. While I have a sizable collection of Hungarian miniature books, relatively few of them are on my shelf because I can't read Hungarian, making it difficult to catalog. So then here are the Hungarian books I have at hand right now. One day I'll pull the rest out, go through them and get them cataloged.

Between the end of World War II and the end of the Soviet Union, Hungary was the miniature book capital of the world. While miniature book publishers in the US and western Europe were putting out editions of a hundred or two hundred copies, Hungarian publishers were making editions of up to 5,000 copies regularly. Subject matter was widely varied with communism and book history being popular. The Hungarians took great pride in their tiny books as can be seen in their great beauty.

I'd like to highlight just a few now. The first two are really quite amazing, being printed on pages of aluminum! The first one, published in 1985, is quite well known but I had never seen the second one, published in 1999, till this copy was offered via eBay.

Janka Gyula was a great promoter of miniature books in Hungary and published many miniature books about miniature books. One series he did was a bibliography of Hungarian miniature books. I have five volumes covering books published between 1945 and 1976. If there were later volumes, I've never seen them. My copy of the first volume came from the personal collection of famous German bookseller Abraham Horodisch and has his bookplate.

Many of the miniature books of Hungary are multilingual, with English, German and/or Russian being commonly found alongside the Hungarian.

While the production of miniature books dropped of significantly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it hasn't stopped completely. I have a lovely book of memoirs by Béla Zelei done in 2015. I bought the entire set that included a larger reading copy and three miniature copies, one in paperback, one in gilt cloth and the last in gilt leather.

One beautiful book I have is a miniature facsimile of "Chronica Hungarorum" a 1488 Latin book of medieval Hungarian history.

Well, 2025 is almost over so here's the current condition of my miniature book library. As you can see, I'm nearly out of shelf space... again. Maybe 2026 will be the year I finally build that second large shelf. In the meantime enjoy my chaotic shelves. See you next year! 🎉🎉🎉

Here we have 28 of the 34 Colgate calendars produced from 1880 to 1913. The only longer running series of miniature calendars in America was that of the E. T. Hazeltine/Piso Almanacs that ran from 1879 to 1919. While quote colorful, the calendars from 1880 to 1896 have pretty pedestrian artwork inside, with identical decorative boarders for each month. In 1897 the boarders become pictorial with a different boarder for each month. Starting in 1898 they began to have illustrations, with several years having themes.

They all measure about 2¼"×1¾" and have 16 pages including the covers. Additionally, I have found four years (1880, 1882, 1888, 1892) that have variants printed in different colors.

Those six missing calendars (1885, 1886, 1887, 1889, 1991, 1993) have proven to be a source of frustration for me for a long time now. While Bradbury lists them all, I have never seen any of them, not even a picture of the front. I have been looking since about 2010 for the Colgate calendars but haven't bought one since September of 2020. If you have any that I am missing, please let me know. I may be interested in buying it from you or at the very least, have a photo of the front so I know what I'm looking for. ☺️

Today I have questions about a couple of miniature books that have been lingering in cataloging for over a year.

The first is a mother-of-pearl cover. It has a charming painting on mother-of-pearl inset in the front cover, cosway style. The back is mother-of-pearl engraved in a diamond pattern. The spine and interior is a green silk. There is a pocket of the same silk on thr inside front cover and three loops of the same material that presumably held a pencil. It measures 2"×1-¼". I'm assuming because of the pocket and pencil holder that it was either a notebook or almanac, but am open to other ideas. My questions are, have you seen anything like this before? If so, was there a book inside? If so, what was the book and were you able to date it?

The second one is a beautiful hand painted accordion book. It measures 2-³/¹⁶"×1⅝" and has 12 pages, written on one side only. Ther is no indication of who, where or when it was made or a limitation. I have an idea of who might have made it but I'd like to see if anyone had their own idea of who it might have been.