Victorian Valentines

The most romantic and florid expressions of love were the fashion in the Victorian Age, which was to be expected of a time that masked and ornamented the erotic impulse. The end of that era was coincident with the golden age of the postcard (1890 to World War 1) and so we have tens of thousands of Valentine's Day postcards, many displaying high levels of imaginations and design. Each age leaves an impact of its character in its greeting cards and other paper ephemera. We see in the beautiful postcards of the late Victorians that era's predilections in both love and design. The imagery in Victorian Valentines Postcard Book is largely formal because, to the Victorians, love was a serious business. We see beautiful women, well-groomed children, and the classical February 14 icons of cherubs, ornate hearts and many beautiful flowers. This is a thoroughly decorated universe, featuring baroque typography, bows and ribbons everywhere, and the occasional touch of lace. So felicitously do Valentine's Day and Victoriana mesh that much of what we think of as traditional Valentine's Day imagery is Victorian in origin. We have selected 30 favorites from our collection for this gathering. That complex of attitude and tendencies that we call the Victorian Age did not, of course, vanish on the Queen's death in 1900. It persisted and evolved until the First World War. For this book we have confined ourselves to postcards published before 1910.

This book explores the relationship between Thomas Hardy’s works and Victorian media and technologies of communication – especially the penny post and the telegraph. Through its close analysis of letters, telegrams, and hand-delivered notes in Hardy’s novels, short stories, and poems, it ties together a wide range of subjects: technological and infrastructural developments; material culture; individual subjectivity and the construction of identity; the relationship between private experience and social conventions; and the new narrative possibilities suggested by modern modes of communication.

The Victorian era is famous for the collecting, hording, and displaying of things; for the mass production and consumption of things; for the invention, distribution and sale of things; for those who had things, and those who did not. For many people, the Victorian period is intrinsically associated with paraphernalia. This collection of essays explores the Victorians through their materiality, and asks how objects were part of being Victorian; which objects defined them, represented them, were uniquely theirs; and how reading the Victorians, through their possessions, can deepen our understanding of Victorian culture. Miscellaneous and often auxiliary, paraphernalia becomes the ‘disjecta’ of everyday life, deemed neither valuable enough for museums nor symbolic enough for purely literary study. This interdisciplinary collection looks at the historical, cultural and literary debris that makes up the background of Victorian life: Valentine’s cards, fish tanks, sugar plums, china ornaments, hair ribbons, dresses and more. Contributors also, however, consider how we use Victorian objects to construct the Victorian today; museum spaces, the relation of Victorian text to object, and our reading – or gazing at – Victorian advertisements out of context on searchable online databases. Responding to thing theory and modern scholarship on Victorian material culture, this book addresses five key concerns of Victorian materiality: collecting; defining class in the home; objects becoming things; objects to texts; objects in circulation through print culture.

Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an unprecedented explosion of visual print culture and a simultaneous rise in literacy across social classes. New printing technologies facilitated quick and cheap dissemination of images—illustrated books, periodicals, cartoons, comics, and ephemera—to a mass readership. This Victorian visual turn prefigured the present-day impact of the Internet on how images are produced and shared, both driving and reflecting the visual culture of its time. From this starting point, Drawing on the Victorians sets out to explore the relationship between Victorian graphic texts and today’s steampunk, manga, and other neo-Victorian genres that emulate and reinterpret their predecessors. Neo-Victorianism is a flourishing worldwide phenomenon, but one whose relationship with the texts from which it takes its inspiration remains underexplored. In this collection, scholars from literary studies, cultural studies, and art history consider contemporary works—Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Moto Naoko’s Lady Victorian, and Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies, among others—alongside their antecedents, from Punch’s 1897 Jubilee issue to Alice in Wonderland and more. They build on previous work on neo-Victorianism to affirm that the past not only influences but converses with the present. Contributors: Christine Ferguson, Kate Flint, Anna Maria Jones, Linda K. Hughes, Heidi Kaufman, Brian Maidment, Rebecca N. Mitchell, Jennifer Phegley, Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Peter W. Sinnema, Jessica Straley

Although "snail mail" may seem old fashioned and outdated in the twenty-first century, Catherine Golden argues that the creation of the Penny Post in Victorian England was just as revolutionary in its time as e-mail and text messages are today. Until Queen Victoria instituted the Postal Reform Act of 1839, mail was a luxury affordable only by the rich. Allowing anyone, from any social class, to send a letter anywhere in the country for only a penny had multiple and profound cultural impacts. Golden demonstrates how cheap postage--which was quickly adopted in other countries--led to a postal "network" that can be viewed as a forerunner of computer-mediated communications. Indeed, the revolution in letter writing of the nineteenth century led to blackmail, frauds, unsolicited mass mailings, and junk mail--problems that remain with us today.

The beautifully illustrated Bird Lovers Journal, Writing Journal Featuring Antique Bird Art offers an artistic channel for inspiration and self-reflection. The unique historic bird graphics surround your journal entries and motivate you to journal from the heart. It provides a beautiful and private place to document thoughts, feelings, and personal experiences. Collection pieces used to create the art include: antique sheet music Victorian valentines antique cards antique catalog illustrations postcard greetings Victorian trade cards Victorian calling cards antique atlas maps antique French labels authentic German scrap

From dimensional appliqu� to lively, eye-catching zig-zag designs, these greeting card techniques will delight the creative crafter in search of inspiration. It’s not a collection of projects, but an encyclopedia chock-full of fabulous ideas that card makers can use in whatever way they want, for whatever type of card they need. There’s so much to select from: fast, easy, and elegant die-cut cards; foam cutouts posted on colorful patterned papers; lacy greetings that incorporate doilies; and even sparkling, bejeweled ones. In addition to all the basics on tools, there’s information on choosing cardstock; selecting pretty embellishments; and making personalized envelopes.

Hundreds of budget-friendly projects include edible homemade goodies, holiday decorations, toys, musical instruments, and gifts made from wood, metal, glass, leather, clay, and found objects.