Original publication, not the "historic reprint". Sewn booklet with wrinkled and spotted wraps, toned pages. Detailed steel cut illustrations, including cartoons. Sun rise/set, moon phases, planting tables, and advertisments, along with stories and good advice.

Hostetter & Smith were primarily snake oil salesmen (stomach bitters, see back cover). Founded before the Civil War, by 1866 they had become successful enough to have two locations in Pittsburgh and were running their own printing press to keep up with the need for order forms, and so forth.

From Industries of Pittsburgh 1879 [The year this item was printed]: In the Printing and Binding departments, alone, are now employed eighty compositors, pressmen and others. The equipment in machinery consists in part of 10 large cylinder presses, and 8 smaller ones, all of which are kept running ten months during the year upon the publication of Hostetter's Illustrated United States Almanacs, which are printed in the English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Welsh, Norwegian, Swedish and Bohemian languages. This Almanac was first issued in 1862 and was published only in German and English, increasing its edition each year and reaching in the year 1867 one million copies, which were disseminated in these two languages. Still increasing its edition each year it reached, in 1876, 9,000,000 copies, which were produced that year in all the various languages above enumerated, the average issue per year at the present time being 10,500,060 copies, Consuming annually 16,000 reams of white paper, and about 2000 reams for covers alone. Little wonder there are so many reprints on the market.