This event has passed.

Experts Next Door: Write, Fold, Seal: Letter Writing in the Victorian Age with Catherine Golden

Name: Experts Next Door: Write, Fold, Seal: Letter Writing in the Victorian Age with Catherine Golden
Start: 2026-01-22T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-01-22T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Online

January 22 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Long before e-mail, Facebook, and Instagram, letter writing was the only way to communicate. The recipient, not the sender, had to pay to receive a letter at the time of delivery. Postage rates in early Victorian Britain were so high that many people dreaded the postman’s knock. But all that changed in 1840 with the Penny Post. Letter writing—no longer a privilege for the wealthy—became an affordable way to connect with family, friends, and professional associates. In this Zoom presentation, we will journey to Victorian England to learn about the first adhesive postage stamp, called the Penny Black, and a method for prepayment, which quickly became the model for other nations including the United States. We will consider, too, how the Penny Post promoted many forms of anticipated as well as unsolicited missives that still plague us today. For the second part of this presentation, we will examine Victorian artifacts that accompanied letter writing in the Victorian age. I will demonstrate writing with nibbed pens and ink on a Victorian writing desk, cross-writing, letter folding, sealing, addressing a letter, and affixing a postage stamp. If they wish, audience members can learn to fold a letter along with me.

Catherine J. Golden is professor of English and Tisch Chair in Arts and Letters (2017-22) at Skidmore College. She is author of Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book (2017), Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing (2009), and Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction (2003). She is editor or coeditor of five additional books on topics ranging from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Victorian illustration, literature, and culture. Golden is a Pedagogy Consultant for COVE (Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education) and an Editorial Advisory Board member and regular contributor to Illustration Magazine, a British arts journal.

Your support powers everything we do. All donations are welcome, and enable us to continue offering the highest quality programming. For this event, there is a suggested donation of $5.