Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales was second in line for the British throne when she died at age 21 on November 6, 1817, after a horrendous two-day labor that ended in stillbirth. Among the more enduring signs of the British people's profound mourning for her are the many elegies that were published in the following days and weeks in newspapers, and as stand-alone publications. The NYPL's Pforzheimer Collection has many such poems, both in print and in manuscript.

Lord Byron, then England's most famous poet, was putting the finishing touches on the fourth canto of his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage when the Princess died. Shocked by the tragedy, he was moved to add six stanzas about her to his poem (". . . in the dust / The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid, / The love of millions! How we did entrust / Futurity to her!"). 

Percy Bysshe Shelley, less sentimental, responded in prose: "It is a dreadful thing to know that she is a putrid corpse." Shelley was angered by the recent executions (and beheadings) of three men considered by many to have been unjustly convicted of treason. His address, known as We Pity The Plumage But Forget The Dying Bird, argues that the death more worthy of mourning was that of British liberty.

More commercial tributes to the princess also appeared in the wake of her death, and the Pforzheimer Collection recently acquired a very rare one: Nelson's Pocket Almanack for the Year 1818. No other copy is recorded and, as far as we can tell, no editions were published for any year before or after 1818.

The information in Nelson's is not unique—it records the same festival dates and astronomical occurrences as any other almanac of the time. What sets it apart is its format: not a codex, it consists of six two-inch engraved paper discs stacked within a brass and black lacquer case.

Inside each half of the case is pasted another little round engraving: one is a "title page" with an image of Father Time; the other is a portrait of Princess Charlotte, with her birth, marriage, and death dates, signed "Eng[rave]d by / E. Nelson." This is very probably the engraver, printer, and bookseller Edward Nelson (d. 1837), whose shop in 1818 was at Snow Hill in Birmingham, England.

The almanac's user was apparently supposed to stack the discs within the case with the current month on top, allowing for quick access to pertinent information when the case is opened. It is, however, difficult to imagine Nelson's Pocket Almanack being very useful beyond its novelty—the minuscule engraved script isn't easy to read. The primary value of the almanac was almost certainly in its commemoration of the Princess and, as commemorative novelties go, it is certainly an attractive one.