{"id":18219,"date":"2024-12-18T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/?p=18219"},"modified":"2026-02-27T21:21:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:21:27","slug":"copes-christmas-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/2024\/12\/18\/copes-christmas-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Cope\u2019s Christmas Cards: A Window into the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Arline Wilson, Special Collections<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This original watercolor of <\/span>Cope\u2019s Christmas Card <\/span><\/em>of 1883 was created for the Cope Brothers Company<\/span> in Liverpool, England by Scottish artist John Wallace, who published his artwork under the pseudonym George Pipeshank. Beginning in February 1874, the company began sending the annual Cope\u2019s Christmas Card to paid subscribers. Cope\u2019s cards were large, intricate, full color lithographs that depicted different comical and sometimes cynical scenes and caricatures of contemporary celebrities, politicians, and iconic cultural or political events which occurred that year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cope's

Cope\u2019s Christmas Card, 1883<\/strong>
Watercolor illustration by George Pipeshank
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection \u2013 Art bins D8 MSL 4036<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Owned by brothers George Cope (1823-1888) and Thomas Cope (1827-1884), by 1884, the Cope Brothers Company<\/span> was the largest tobacco manufacturer in the world and one of the first tobacco manufacturers to hire a female worker. In addition to using the popular 19th-century practice of sending holiday cards that advertise its tobacco, the Cope Brothers Company<\/span> used several innovative advertising tactics to promote its products, including the <\/span>Cope\u2019s Smoke-Room Booklets<\/span><\/em>, published between 1889-1894. The pocket-sized booklets featured articles about and promoting smoking as well as literary excerpts from famous authors, such as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin. Like their annual holiday cards, the booklets used literature to market Cope\u2019s products and to resist growing anti-smoking sentiment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To help readers decipher the illustration, each card was published with a \u201cKey to Cope\u2019s Card.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Key

Key to Cope\u2019s Card<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The key to the 1883 <\/span>Cope\u2019s Christmas Card<\/span><\/em>, subtitled \u2018A Bird\u2019s-eye View of the Times We Live In,\u2019 humorously depicts 67 celebrities of the day, including Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Henry Iriving and John Ruskin. The Cope\u2019s cards and booklets serve as a time-capsule into the historical and social past of this period.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This illustration is part of the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection<\/a>, which focuses on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. The collection comprises of more than 9,750 books, periodicals, letters, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and artwork. <\/span>In addition to the Cope\u2019s Christmas Card <\/em>of 1883, the Lasner Collection also holds copies of the Cope\u2019s Smoke-Room Booklets, <\/em>including the 1893 booklet, No. 13, which was recalled due to legal proceedings initiated by John Rushkin against Cope Brothers Company<\/span> for printing his work without the author\u2019s permission.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Booklets\"

Cope\u2019s Smoke-Room Booklets<\/strong>
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection \u2013 \u00a0HD9130.1 .C68<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Booklets\"

Cope\u2019s Smoke-Room Booklets<\/strong>
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection \u2013 \u00a0HD9130.1 .C68<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Booklets\"

Cope’s Smoke Room Booklets – Recall notice.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cA View from the Vault\u201d showcases some of the unique, notable or rare items that are a part of the Special Collections and Museums holdings at the University of Delaware. Each month, we highlight a different work and share interesting facts or intriguing histories about it. If you are interested in seeing any of the materials featured in person or want to learn more about any work showcased in the series, please contact Special Collections and Museums at <\/span>AskSpec<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>AskMuseums<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Arline Wilson, Special Collections   This original watercolor of Cope\u2019s Christmas Card of 1883 was created for the Cope Brothers Company in Liverpool, England by Scottish artist John Wallace, who published his artwork under the pseudonym George Pipeshank. Beginning …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":18221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17,4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-museums","category-news","category-special"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 04:44:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18219"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18315,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18219\/revisions\/18315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.udel.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}