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Our Victorian Magazine Collection:  The Illustrated London Almanack

Home > About Our Magazines > The Illustrated London Almanack 1845-1888 VictorianVoices.net has made all our volumes of The Illustrated London Almanack available on Archive.org. Visit the magazine pages for download links, or visit our magazine download page to see all available magazines. In addition, a complete collection of prints from the ILA is available in our Clip Art section. The Illustrated London Almanack was published annually by The Illustrated London News from 1845 to 1895. Beginning in 1858, each issue offered six seasonally themed color engravings by the Leighton Brothers - whose prints were considered highly collectible then and now! As the name suggests, the ILA focused upon the needs of the London reader. Issues averaged 60-65 pages, and included information about London institutions, scientific societies, banks, public officials and government ministers, members of the royal household, postal rates and regulations, taxes and license fees, and even such items as London cab fares. Most issues also included a list of key events, obituaries, and laws and Acts of Parliament from the preceding year. Moving beyond local topics, the ILA also offered lists of world monarchs, historic monarchs, data on the economic status of various British colonies, articles on seasonal customs and folklore, features on seasonal wildlife, and articles on social and recreational events for the year. Earlier issues also offered an astronomy feature, covering "the night skies over London" for the year to come. After 1880, the Almanack dropped most of its articles and focused almost entirely on charts, lists, and so forth. The quality of its color prints also began to decline, and in 1888 the magazine switched to duotones. In that year it also switched from being a compendium of useful information to, primarily, a publication of short (and not very good) fiction. Hence, our collection ends here. The ILA is very difficult to find. You can obtain expensive print-on-demand collections published in India, but as these are produced from Google scans, the reproductions are extremely poor. Thus, we're especially pleased to be able to share high-resolution, full-color scans of our copies through Archive.org A complete collection of color prints from the Illustrated London Almanack is available in our Victorian Clip Art Collection. SAMPLE PRINTS:

View the Issues On This Site: 1845 • 1846 1847 • 1848 1849 • 1850 1851 • 1852 1853 • 1854 1855 • 1856 1857 • 1858 1859 • 1860 1861 • 1862 1863 • 1864 1865 • 1866 1867 • 1868 1869 • 1870 1871 • 1872 1873 • 1874 1875 • 1876 1877 • 1878 1879 • 1880 1881 • 1882 1883 • 1884 1885 • 1886 1887 • 1888