PBA Galleries

8pp. Double folio newspaper, being one massive sheet, 157.5x112 cm, (62 x 44"), folded. Illustrated with numerous woodcuts. Untrimmed and uncut at top.

Profusely illustrated Christmas miscellany issued in massive newspaper format and a fine example of what Frank Luther Mott called a “monster folio.” As with the smaller quarto magazine issue, Brother Jonathan borrowed its text liberally and many of the over 50 woodcuts and engravings “conveyed” from a variety of sources. 

Mott noted, the “special issues of the ‘mammoth’ weeklies— such as the ‘Pictorial Jubilee Numbers of the Brother Jonathan ‘issued every Fourth of July and Christmas,’ consisted chiefly of wood-cuts. Some of these engravings were very large” (A History of American Magazines, I, p.524). Page one, center, has a large cut  by R. Roberts of two children waking up in bed of Christmas Morning (with a poem to that effect below). “The Early Adventures of Ralph Ringwood” by Washington Irving occupies most of the second page.