In pictures: Victorian Valentine's Day cards
Many of us will be hoping to receive a Valentine's Day card from that special someone. But what might it have looked like in the Victorian period?
A selection of Victorian Valentine's Day cards went on show in 2015 at Manchester Metropolitan University. The cards, often handmade, featured lace, pressed grass and Valentine’s jokes. One card, titled 'The Bark of Love', featured a fairy in a gilded carriage drawn by two swans. Another, rather saucy card, featured what is possibly a pair of Victorian undergarments, with the message, "I think of you with inexpressible delight".
The cards were drawn from the Laura Seddon Collection at the university. The collection includes more than 50,000 cards, of which just over 1,000 are Valentine's. It was amassed over 25 years, and was donated to the university in 1991.
- Read more about the history of Valentine's Day
(All images © Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections)
This gallery was first published on HistoryExtra in 2015
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