The First American Knitting Book

What was the first American knitting book?

In which I attempt to resurrect the Long.Dead.Blog

Editing to add...sometime after I published this "Lonely Hours" finally made its way onto the internet! Thank you to the Boston Public Library and Internet Archive. https://archive.org/embed/lonelyhourstextb00amer

It seemed such a simple question. Indeed, it had a simple answer. But, in the rush to answer it the knitter, the historian and the librarian rushed headlong into each other, all landing in a heap on the ground. As I got up and dusted myself off, and made sure I had not impaled myself with the 0000 steels the knitter was holding, I realized I was at the edge of some great precipice. As I peered over the edge trying to figure out what it was the ground gave way and I went tumbling down…down…down…As I tumbled I thought I saw a rabbit, a white rabbit. I wondered if he was an angora and if I could have some of his hair. As I pondered the hare’s hair my fall finally came to an end. I looked around and saw the rabbit, the rabbit with his waistcoat and pocket watch. That was no simple hole I fell down, no, I had tumbled down the proverbial rabbit hole…

So, what was the first American knitting book? The first book with an American imprint was in 1842, a reprint of Mrs Lambert’s “The hand-book of needlework”. The first book with an American author was just a year later in 1843, “The Ladies' hand-book of knitting, netting, and crochet;: containing plain directions by which …” published by Redfield in NY.   It’s not that simple though. The contents of “The ladies’ hand-book” was actually the contents of the 1842 “The ladies' hand-book of knitting, netting, and crochet” published in London. Even though there were copyright laws in the 19^th century, even international treaties, copyright violation was rampant. Even more rampant that I realized it turns out. Most of the early knitting books (including ‘knitting and…’ as well as general needlework books with knitting chapters) were reprinting other books, sometimes excerpted or rearranged and sometimes not. In fact one 1850 book was reprinted in part as late as 1886!* The continual and long term reuse of patterns raises questions about how far after something fell out of fashion a lady might have made an item. Did a woman in 1886 just know not to make the 1850 collar, which would be hopelessly out of date? Or that the 1850 bonnet cap which sat nicely under an 1850 cottage bonnet would be functionally awkward (and visually ugly) under a little 1886 hat? That topic would warrant its own post, if only I or anyone I’ve discussed it could figure out why they reprinted those patterns so far out of their context and what the implications really were! 

I’ve spent more hours than I want to know reading and comparing knitting books and patterns in some huge, warped, game of concentration trying to figure out which books were copies or excerpts of other books. Google, Google Books, Internet Archive and Hathi Trust all helped me ferret out matches but all also choke (badly) in trying to search knitting notation. (They also can’t really search two major projects providing image-only pdfs). What was I looking for? A book of, or including a chapter of, knitting with an American imprint and content which I couldn’t trace back to an English** book. Did I find one? Yes!

The 1849 “Lonely hours a textbook of knitting” by “An American Lady”, published by E. Gaskill in Philadelphia. It has “twenty-seven patterns and directions for the most useful and fashionable articles of knitting now in use. Adapted to American customs”

  

That last bit at first made me think these were just going to be rewritten English patterns but I’ve now sat on this bit of research for several years, watching as I dug through more and more books, looking at indexing patterns, and have not found these exact patterns in any other earlier sources. I believe that that is in fact the first truly American knitting book. I have absolutely no clues about who that “American Lady” might have been, I wish I did. 

Did this lady just happen to write this books and just happen to be first. Not really, it is in fact a reaction to the reliance of foreign patterns and lack of American ones. From the preface:

“The English works on the subject are almost unintelligible to the ladies of our country, owing to the difference of material used, and the obscurity of the technical terms, leading many to suppose that the difficulties of the art are insurmountable. Far from it. The alphabet of knitting is as simple as that of language – and it has been the writer’s endeavor to render the elements of the art so plain and simple as to bring the attentive pupil by easy and imperceptible steps to perfection.

                If success may but follow her humble effort, and the lonely hours of strangers as well as friend, be cheered by this most fascinating employment, as have been her own, she will feel amply rewarded for the thought and her labor bestowed upon it.”

Is there anything different about the content? There’s nothing earth shattering but there are a few little curiosities. The majority of the content is things like stitch patterns (I have not knit all of these up to see how close they are to earlier published ones), socks, and tidies. But, then there’s a nifty child’s “apron” which is a pinafore. There’s a sun bonnet with a knit brim (lined in colored lawn and with a muslin cape). I’ve seen nothing like it in any other publication and I know of just one extant bonnet similar to it and that’s in an American (private) collection. Then there’s a pattern for a lady’s knit bonnet, in cotton and shaped over a bonnet form. There’s another pattern for a knit bonnet contemporary to this but what sets this apart is a suggestion to dye it with saffron to imitate straw, something I have seen just one other time and again in an American publication. Did this American Lady make these things up on her own? I have no idea if they are original to her, stolen from other sources I have yet to find or, things which were already being made and she was the first to commit to print. If anyone has seen knit pinafores or knit bonnets (cotton), which could be from the 1840s/early 50s, in museum or private collections I would love to know about them, they could help give clues about how common they were and where this book fits in their commonness.

*The 1886 The work box and needle or rules & directions for netting, knitting, tatting berlin and lace work, by a Leading Pattern Maker, is a reprint of the 1850 "Ladies' work-box companion : a hand-book knitting, netting, tatting, and berlin work" minus its crochet section which had been reprinted from the 1847 "The lady's book of useful and ornamental crochet work, containing receipts for executing a great variety of useful and fancy articles". Oh what a tangled web they wove when they intended to print a book without doing very much work!

**Why English? Weren’t Germany and France really the fashion leaders in the Victorian era? I do look at French sources when I get the chance, and some of the patterns in American magazines were coming out of French publications. I will admit that my German skills, especially in the old Fractur, are basically non-existent. Through the 30s, 40s, and early 50s there are several English authors who do appear to be publishing original content, not stolen from the continent, it is that content that I find in books published in the US.