The Comic Valentine of mid-Victorian England

Cupids Vagaries

“But in the family of social life the Valentine Comic makes the sport - so as are the squibs and crackers in November, are the Valentines in February - great guns for the toy shop ! There you see them in every form of the amatory burlesque - in every phase of personality and caricature, and friends and acquaintances, and pretty men and ugly women, and people one has a spite against, and people one has a joke against get letters such as never came before.”
The Illustrated London News, February 1845

“There are, however, so many abuses, so many dangers and incitements to evil, in the usages of this day, that it would be well for the virtue of thousands if its observance were wholly abandoned.”
Notes & Queries, February 1863

Opposite
Comic valentine
No publisher
120 x 177mm (4¾ x 7in)
Mid 19th century

Simple young man succeed where you can,
You're not quite the angel for me,
Go to your Ma, and tell your Papa
That in wedlock we never can be

Albums & Scraps	Victorian Albums Victorian Scraps Father Tuck's Complete Picture Maker
Saint Valentines Day	Lace-Paper Valentines Comic Valentines
Easter & Fairyland	Easter Frolics In Fairyland
Christmas & New Year	A Victorian Christmas A Christmas Menagerie
Printed Ephemera	The Calendar Reward of Merit The English Lotteries
Publishers	Victorian Greeting Card Publishers