Welcome
Hi everyone! My name is Abby Wren. I am a recipient of the 2022 Dean’s Undergraduate Research Awards (DURA) in the Humanities. The focus my project and this site is the Cobbold Valentines Album from the Hopkins Sheridan Libraries Special Collections.
From the 1800s to 1820s, novelist, poet, conchologist, and socialite Elizabeth Cobbold hosted valentine parties for her single upper-crust friends at her house “The Cliff” in Ipswich, England. Pairs of valentines were hand-cut, inscribed with one of Cobbold’s original poems, and mounted on either blue (for the gentlemen) or red (for the ladies) paper. The attendees then found their “match” at the party.
The Sheridan Libraries Special Collections at Hopkins has an album containing 125 of Cobbold’s valentines. The artwork is beautiful and intricate, and the poems are charming and amusing. Many of the valentines also act as little time capsules for ideas in early 19th-century British culture. A particularly interesting valentine is of a Nairne Friction Machine (pictured below). This was a type of hand-cranked electrostatic machine used for early study of electricity as well as novelty entertainment. I personally love all the electricity puns featured in the poem and the sparks coming from the machine in the image!
Nairne Friction Machine by Elizabeth Cobbold (Ipswich, England c. 1815-1820)
What though your wit’s electric blaze
With brilliant coruscation plays,
What though the lightning of your eyes
[A flash more] bright than [this] supplies
And all your [v]ario[us] graces prove
A perfect battery of Love
Ye[t] you [perhaps] fair Lady mark
May [chime] yourself to take a spark.
I had so much fun putting this together, and I hope you enjoy learning a bit about Cobbold and Valentine's Day history. I encourage you to treat this site as an “exhibit.” I have included pages on subjects relating to the album as well as featured valentines. All 125 valentines with their transcripts are available under “Cobbold Valentine’s Gallery.”