The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia - Smithsonian ...

“Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?”Post Office Reform, CollectibleCommodities, and Victorian CultureCatherine J. GoldenAlthough we know Lewis Carroll as the creator of Alice’s Adventures inWonderland (1865), Carroll (née Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) immersedhimself in the world of letter writing and postal ephemera. An avid letterwriter, 1 Carroll is also author of a letter- writing manual, Eight or Nine WiseWords About Letter- Writing (1890), and inventor of a postage stamp case marketedwith it. His fascination with letter- writing culture allowed his Mad Hatterin Alice in Wonderland to stump an already befuddled Alice with the riddle,“‘Why is a raven like a writing- desk?’” 2 Although ravens were denizens of theTower of London long before the creation of the Penny Black, we can trace theupsurge of writing desks, letter- writing manuals, illustrated envelopes, ink wells,pens, and a whole variety of postal products to the historical moment in VictorianBritain when the Penny Post and the prepaid, adhesive postage stampwere born (1839–1840). On January 10, 1840, affordable mail extended acrossEngland; a letter weighing up to one- half ounce could travel anywhere in the UKfor only a penny. With this revolutionary change in communications came postalproducts, a new field of industry. Cheap postage and the introduction of postagestamps led to new jobs, hobbies—timbromania, now called philately—andinnovative postal practices as well as a proliferation of telling material objects.Writing desks, pictorial envelopes, and valentines—the focus of this essay—grewin variety and popularity; when viewed as cultural objects, these collectible commoditieshelp us to reconstruct aspects of the Victorian British way of life.The Rise of the Penny PostWe can trace the increase in postal ephemera to the years witnessing the riseof the Penny Post, 1837–1840. Prior to postal reform, letter writing, the onlyway to communicate with a distant audience, was a luxury mostly affordedby the rich. Two landmarks frame postal reform in nineteenth- century Britain.In 1837, Rowland Hill published multiple editions of a landmark postal reformpamphlet called Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability,arguing why the British needed postal reform. 3 That same year, Queen Victoria