Full of relevant information, this book covers the whole field of picture postcard production in Britain. It is an indispensable reference to a vast amount of collectable pictorial material.

Artist-drawn humorous postcards were growing considerably in popularity at the start of the 20th century. When war broke out in 1914 trade in them soared as the government utilised them as a widespread means of communication, to bolster morale, stiffen resolve and lift up the spirits in the field, at sea and on the home front from 1914 to 1919. They were also an excellent tool for recording and commenting on military and civilian events as they unfolded. Although the conflict was no laughing matter, humour helped to bring people together and feel stronger during a time of suffering; these postcards helped achieved this and they are therefore considered as significant historical documents. Pack Up Your Troubles is the first book of this kind to focus exclusively on the impact of British humour in the art of the picture postcards of World War One, both in the field and on the home front. The book is divided into themed chapters of the era, from Camp Life and Training to The Western Front through to Women at War and many more in between. Each section shows approximately 20 postcards within that theme, each with an explanatory caption. This book would be an ideal gift for anyone with an interest in war and military history, art and design, cartoons, and anyone who enjoys humour and laughing.

From around 1880, for almost a hundred years, shipowners commissioned a wealth of paintings that depicted their magnificent liners as well as the routes they travelled, their exotic destinations, and life onboard. These paintings, rich in imagination and atmosphere, appeared on postcards and posters of the day and were used to advertise the companies and their ships; and so was born a whole genre that produced tens of thousands of paintings which formed a wonderful record of the great era of the passenger liner. In 1900, there were over thirty shipping companies operating passenger liners across the North Atlantic. Other oceans were similarly served. But now, with just a few exceptions, the companies and their liners have disappeared along with the art they once inspired. Little remains to recall this aspect of our maritime past except the postcards; and they tell an evocative story of the vanished world of elegant ships and leisurely travel, of social and political times much changed by the history of the past century. Here, brought vividly to life in more than 500 colourful postcards, are the ships on which so many of our predecessors sailed—as emigrants, soldiers, administrators, or simply as tourists—in days long past. These cards, which are now highly collectable, show how steamships developed over the years, but they are also a fine tribute to the artists who painted them. This volume also includes a glossary of some 170 illustrators, which forms an important reference section, and advice on collecting.

This insightful and elegantly written book examines how the popular media of the Victorian era sustained and transformed the reputations of Romantic writers. Tom Mole provides a new reception history of Lord Byron, Felicia Hemans, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth—one that moves beyond the punctual historicism of much recent criticism and the narrow horizons of previous reception histories. He attends instead to the material artifacts and cultural practices that remediated Romantic writers and their works amid shifting understandings of history, memory, and media. Mole scrutinizes Victorian efforts to canonize and commodify Romantic writers in a changed media ecology. He shows how illustrated books renovated Romantic writing, how preachers incorporated irreligious Romantics into their sermons, how new statues and memorials integrated Romantic writers into an emerging national pantheon, and how anthologies mediated their works to new generations. This ambitious study investigates a wide range of material objects Victorians made in response to Romantic writing—such as photographs, postcards, books, and collectibles—that in turn remade the public’s understanding of Romantic writers. Shedding new light on how Romantic authors were posthumously recruited to address later cultural concerns, What the Victorians Made of Romanticism reveals new histories of appropriation, remediation, and renewal that resonate in our own moment of media change, when once again the cultural products of the past seem in danger of being forgotten if they are not reimagined for new audiences.

Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities presents exciting new perspectives on modern colonial regimes to researchers and students in gender studies, history and cultural studies.