Rare Book: Essays for the Month of December

This month’s artifact comes from our Rare Book Library. Essays for the Month of December 1716  to be Continued Monthly by a Society of Gentlemen...by Aaron Hill is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of essays (supposedly written by multiple men but most likely all penned by Mr. Hill himself) regarding a variety of topics of consequence for an upper-class man of the eighteenth century. The first essay in this collection has to do with the making of chinaware (and anticipates the manufacture of porcelain in England by 30 years). The rest of this edition has to do with topics regarding the manipulation of “the Earth’s hidden mineral stores” and deals with the theme of transformation. 

Only one other edition of this expected twelve-month anthology was ever written. It was entitled Essays for the Month of January 1717 to be Continued Monthly by a Society of Gentlemen. However, after January 1717, no more editions of this series were ever published. 

The cover of the edition in our collection is most likely made of calfskin leather, and the binding itself is rather contemporary. It has a simple gold tooled double frame around the edge of the cover that is quite faded - but visible if you look close enough. During the eighteenth century, bookbinding was going through a metamorphosis of sorts. Books were transitioning from being stored “paper side” out to spine out. With this book, we can see a very simple spine with raised bands as well as blind tooling along the edges of the cover (that sandwich the pages). Thus, we can assume this book was bound with the intention that it was to be stored either way - spine out or pages out. 

Background on the Author, Aaron Hill (1685-1750): Hill himself was an English dramatist and poet, most active during the Georgian period of English history. In 1720, Hill began to invest nearly all his emotional and intellectual energies into the circle of young male and female writers he began to gather around him, a literary clique dubbed the ‘Hillarian Circle.’ It disbanded in 1723. Nearly 20 literary and dramatic works have been attributed to him.