More on the History of Scrapbooking

Today's post has more information about the history and evolution of scrapbooking. This information was also gleaned from the scrapbooking organization "Pages of the Heart."

Scrapbooking continued to gain popularity when John Poole published "Manuscript Gleanings and Literary Scrapbook in 1826 and other publications such as 'The Scrapbook' which defined a scrapbook as a blank book which held newspaper articles and pictures for preservation. The term "scrapbook" came about when people started using scrap pieces of paper left over from printing jobs to decorate their articles and other clippings.

Mark Twain was actually one of the biggest supporters of scrapbooking in the late 1800s. Twain loved scrapbooking so much that he actually patented a series of scrapbooks in 1872 to be sold by Brentano's Literary Emporium in NYC as well as through the Montgomery Ward catalog. Scrapbooking proved to be quite lucrative for Twain as an article from the St. Louis Dispatch in June 1885 states that Twain made about $50,000 on his scrapbooks compared to the sales of all his novels combined that had netted him about $200,000.

Louis-Jacques Daguerre invented the daguerreotype in 1837 but the process was not made public until 1839. With the invention of photography, people were then able to capture actual moments from their lives to include in the scrapbooks which has led scrapbooking to what it is today. Scrapbook popularity decline in the 1940's when photography became more of a hobby for people. However, Alex Haley then published "Roots" in mid the mid 1970's which is a story that tells Haley's family's history and autobiography back to eighteenth century Africa, which gave rise to genealogical research and a renewed interest in scrapbooking and preserving family history in such a fashion. This helped to keep scrapbooking alive and make it what it is today!