The Valentine Number of Bow Bells, by Adelaide Claxton

An image of Album. Newspaper cuttings. The Valentine Number of Bow Bells. Valentine supplement. Dicks, John, publisher. Claxton, Adelaide, after (British, circa 1842-op.1876). Loose inside album P.14342-R between P.14342-R-65 and P.14342-R-66. The front page of the Valentine supplement of the periodical, _Bow Bells_, dated March 1, 1870. This title-page lithograph features a scene around a post-box of ladies and gentlemen attempting to post their valentines in secret all at once. Cupids/putti fly around the sky catching swirling valentines and at lower centre, a series of putti/Cupids pull on a ribbon to tie it into a bow. Printed at upper right: [BOW BELLS VALENTINE SUPPLEMENT, MARCH 1, 1870. Printed at lower centre and lower right: [Drawn by Adelaide Claxton.] / A.C.. Printed along the left edge: EXTRA VALENTINE NUMBER OF BOW BELLS. Price One penny [L]ondon: Printed and Published by [J]OHN DI[CK]S, at the Office [?], Strand. On the verso is an article entitled: ST. VALENTINE'S DAY., p.2 of the supplement. Glaisher mentions this supplement in a letter to Catherine Parsons during the period in which she is arranging his valentine albums: 'I had seen what I took to be the wrapper of the Bow Bells supplement on Valentines, but had not turned it over (was it stuck down, I wonder?).'. Fitzwilliam Museum archive, MS 951-1985, 30th May, 1925, letter to Miss Catherine Parsons. Lithography, letterpress, 1870.

Terms of use

These images are provided for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND). To license a high resolution version, please contact our image library who will discuss fees, terms and waivers.

Download this image

Creative commons explained - what it means, how you can use our's and other people's content.

Album. Newspaper cuttings. The Valentine Number of Bow Bells. Valentine supplement. Dicks, John, publisher. Claxton, Adelaide, after (British, circa 1842-op.1876). Loose inside album P.14342-R between P.14342-R-65 and P.14342-R-66. The front page of the Valentine supplement of the periodical, _Bow Bells_, dated March 1, 1870. This title-page lithograph features a scene around a post-box of ladies and gentlemen attempting to post their valentines in secret all at once. Cupids/putti fly around the sky catching swirling valentines and at lower centre, a series of putti/Cupids pull on a ribbon to tie it into a bow. Printed at upper right: [BOW BELLS VALENTINE SUPPLEMENT, MARCH 1, 1870. Printed at lower centre and lower right: [Drawn by Adelaide Claxton.] / A.C.. Printed along the left edge: EXTRA VALENTINE NUMBER OF BOW BELLS. Price One penny [L]ondon: Printed and Published by [J]OHN DI[CK]S, at the Office [?], Strand. On the verso is an article entitled: ST. VALENTINE'S DAY., p.2 of the supplement. Glaisher mentions this supplement in a letter to Catherine Parsons during the period in which she is arranging his valentine albums: 'I had seen what I took to be the wrapper of the Bow Bells supplement on Valentines, but had not turned it over (was it stuck down, I wonder?).'. Fitzwilliam Museum archive, MS 951-1985, 30th May, 1925, letter to Miss Catherine Parsons. Lithography, letterpress, 1870.

Image data

Accession Number: P.14342-R-L1
Photograph copyright © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Aperture: f/27.0
Focal length: 80
Camera: Hasselblad H4D-31
Photographer name: Amy Jugg
Image height: 1025 pixels
Image width: 757 pixels
Processed with: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.0 (Windows)
Filesize: 859.87kB
Exposure time: 1/125
ISO Speed: 100
Fnumber: 27/1

Key words

19th Century Adelaide Claxton bonnet Bow Bells British School cherubs fashion fashionable female Fitz_PDP gentleman gentlemen gents hats John Dicks ladies lady letterpress letters lithographed lithographic lithography London Londoners love letter mail mailbox newspaper newspaper supplement post box postal postbox posting a letter print romance romantic Valentines Victorian woman women

Citation for print

This page can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:


            The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024)
            "The Valentine Number of Bow Bells, by Adelaide Claxton"
            Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/image/media-218267 Accessed: 2024-11-24 20:39:06

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this page on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:


            {{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/image/media-218267
            |title=The Valentine Number of Bow Bells, by Adelaide Claxton
            |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-24 20:39:06|publisher=The
            University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/images/media-218267

Bootstrap HTML code for reuse

To use this as a simple code embed, copy this string:

<div class="text-center">
    <figure class="figure">
        <img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/pdp/pdp82/P_14342_R_L1_1_201703_amt49_dc2.jpg"
        alt="The Valentine Number of Bow Bells"
        class="img-fluid" />
        <figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">The Valentine Number of Bow Bells, by Adelaide Claxton</figcaption>
    </figure>
</div>