1. Higgins determines to send... (Image)

1. Higgins determines to send... (Image)

The previous image depicted Harper’s Weekly’s continual Valentine’s Day propaganda. Henkin suggests it to be a theme of the publication’s as an effort to “defend the “Valentine mania” against cynicism in 1859” and offers other examples of their yearly Valentine’s Day imagery. Here we find another, the second in this weekly serial, published the week after Valentine’s Day. The image draws straight back to Henkin’s “Valentine’s Mania” and how the demand to send Valentine’s outweighed the postal service’s capacity to send them. Yet, Harper’s in both instances subverts the cynicism of a holiday by focusing instead on the positive result of the lover’s embrace. Even noting, in this image, the final station as “The Happy Result”. The Happy Result of engaging in the epistolary trend that would continue to grow.

Archives and Special Collections

Calgary: University of Calgary

Semchuk, Sydney

http://library.ucalgary.ca/copyright/images

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