Visual Materials

Charles J. Howard collection of comic valentines

Description

Titles of prints include: Chamber-Maid; Clerk in a Beanery; Clumsy Blacksmith; Cook; Expressman; A Foul-Mouthed Driver; A Highly Decorated Countenance; Hotel Keeper; An Irish Cur; Jack of all Trades; An Old Reprobate; A Street Flaunter; A Tough Old Gal; The Tough Girl is Going to be a New Woman Too, See!; You Should Advertise Like This."

Type

Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)

Date

1880s-1910s

Call number

priHoward

Creator

Howard, Charles J(Opens in new tab)

Provenance

Gift of Nancy L. Barnes and Garland N. Barnes, October 2025.

Restrictions

Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at the Huntington Library for more information.

Rights

The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining permission rests with the researcher.

Find out more

View in the Library catalog(Opens in new tab)

View in the Online Archive of California(Opens in new tab)

Charles J. Howard collection of comic valentines

Visual Materials

A collection of fifteen comic valentines (also known as vinegar valentines and penny dreadfuls), created by illustrator Charles J. Howard dating from approximately the 1880s to 1910s. The valentines ridicule men and women for their physical attributes, racial and ethnic backgrounds, occupations, habits, and behaviors with short rhymes and satirical images. The hand-colored wood engravings include garish caricatures colored in shades of red, blue, green, and yellow on inexpensive paper. Some of the prints are signed by the artist with the letter "H." Titles of prints include: Chamber-Maid; Clerk in a Beanery; Clumsy Blacksmith; Cook; Expressman; A Foul-Mouthed Driver; A Highly Decorated Countenance; Hotel Keeper; An Irish Cur; Jack of all Trades; An Old Reprobate; A Street Flaunter; A Tough Old Gal; The Tough Girl is Going to be a New Woman Too, See!; You Should Advertise Like This."

priHoward

Image not available

Valentine scrapbook

Visual Materials

Black bound album embossed with designs. Album includes valentines, engravings, drawings, and colored illustrations ranging in dates. Many of the drawings are signed "L. Young" and "S. Young." Includes folder of loose materials from scrapbook.

priRosin

Image not available

Album of woodcut comic valentines

Visual Materials

Album's spine is deteriorating. Many of the woodcuts are printed by the American Valentine Co. and were created during the American Civil War. Pages of the back of the album are in German and are unrelated to valentines.

priRosin

Image not available

Comic valentines

Visual Materials

The Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera contains materials from Europe and North America dating from 1493 to the late 2010s. The bulk of the collection consists of greeting cards exchanged on Valentine’s Day, dating from approximately 1840 to 1930. Early handcrafted valentine cards found within the greeting cards subseries demonstrate folk art methods of pinpricking, paper cutting, paper folding, painting, puzzle making, and illustration. Other cards dating from the Victorian era include comic or “vinegar” valentines, paper lace valentines, cobweb valentines, and cards created by various printing, embossing, and assemblage techniques. Many of the late 19th-century cards are dimensional and mechanical paper constructions, made with a combination of die-cut scraps, honeycomb tissue paper, and levers, strings, or wheels that enable the cards to pop-up or move. Also included in the collection are greeting cards exchanged for other holidays and events, friendship cards dating from the Biedermeier era, friendship albums with locks of hair, language of flowers almanacs and booklets, matrimonial documents, sachets, verse writers, religious devotional items, mourning cards, scrapbook albums, and correspondence relating to love and courtship. The collection also contains artifacts and three-dimensional items such as fans, jewelry boxes, shadow boxes, and additional items, some of which include fragile, glass components. Smaller portions of the collection include educational ephemera, such as rewards of merit and bookmarks, and American Civil War ephemera, such as greeting cards and song sheets. Additional materials include artist and organizational files relating to illustrator Catherine “Kate” Greenaway, printer Louis Prang, and 20th-century greeting card companies Rust Craft and Norcross. The last series of this collection contains research materials compiled by valentine scholar Charles Albert Reed and by Nancy Rosin. The materials consist largely of secondary sources, notes, and newspaper clippings.

priRosin

Image not available

Comic valentines, unknown creator. Original art

Visual Materials

priRosin

Image not available

Comic valentines, unknown creator. S, by title

Visual Materials

priRosin

Charles J. Howard collection of comic valentines

Opening Hours

Admission Info and Tickets

You might also be interested in

Charles J. Howard collection of comic valentines

Valentine scrapbook

Album of woodcut comic valentines

Comic valentines

Comic valentines, unknown creator. Original art

Comic valentines, unknown creator. S, by title