Antique Friendship Albums—Beautiful & Heartbreaking & Funny

I collect way too many things, and one of my favorite categories is 19^th century friendship albums, which were created by and for teen-aged girls and young women—although some of the albums belonged to young men. 

They were often beautifully bound and decorated books with blank pages to be filled in by friends and relatives, back in the days before radio and television shortened everyone’s attention span.  A friend or relatives who was asked to inscribe a page would  fill it with  in poetry or prose—demonstrating his/her skill at calligraphy-- or draw or paint an illustration, or sometimes paste in a dried flower or a frilly piece of Victorian scrap—all dedicated to the album’s owner. 

Find out why some of the albums in my collection, including one chronicling Civil War deaths, a highlighted in my new blog post on A Rolling Crone.