The Scrapbook in American Life

Abstract

The Scrapbook in American Life is a welcome addition to the research on collections people keep. The volume includes essays investigating different types of scrapbooks, including albums that contain multiple examples of a single type of artifact, such as trading cards, as well as those that juxtapose different types of artifacts to commemorate a particular experience or time span. Most of the scrapbooks examined date from the nineteenth century, with a few mid-twentieth-century examples. The volume's well-documented introduction covers the development of the scrapbook in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and its spread to the United States as a fashionable pastime during the mid- to late nineteenth century. The late 1800s has been called the “chromo civilization” because technological developments in printing enabled the widespread use of color images in the media (p. 194). Color lithography and the new availability of multiple-print photographs for personal use were key factors in the precipitous growth of scrapbook-making's popularity. This book's only major shortcoming is that it includes only black-and-white illustrations of a very colorful, artful tradition.

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