The Comic Valentine of mid-Victorian England

The Persistent Vitality of Popular Follies

Some of the earliest comic valentines were devoted to caricatures of people or were directed at various trades, usually humorous portraits accompanied by extremely uncomplimentary verses that were calculated to wound.

“One of the different forms which a sportive ingenuity has devised for the abuse of Valentine’s Day and its custom of sending through the Post-Office epistolary compliments to the ladies and gentlemen of your acquaintance, makes a considerable display in the lower class of stationers’ shops. It consists of pictures, more or less comical, and more or less resembling any persons you may chance to know, accompanied usually by a few lines of verse, intended to describe their individual characters from a satirical point of view.”
The Illustrated London News, February 1883

Opposite
Comic valentine
No publisher
127 x 203mm (5 x 8in)
Mid 19th century

You cry your Fish so loud and shrill
Turbot, Mackerel, Plaice and Brill
And on the women passing by
You leer and cast a fishy eye,
Now who on earth would ever wish
To have a man who smells of fish.

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