The Edwardian Postcard

Project: Research

Description

The early British postcard is a fascinating multimodal communications technology. In the heyday of the postcard during the Edwardian age (1901-1910), it offered an opportunity for the exchange of everyday messages with pictures at very low cost. This opportunity was not to be available again until the contemporary digital revolution. Up to six deliveries a day were being made in major cities and 6 billion cards were sent in the period. We have collected 3,000 cards from the period to examine the creative responses of the population to this new technology.

This site now features a searchable resource of 1,000 of our cards, together with their transcriptions. We've added historical records wherever we've been able to find additional historical information, especially from the 1901 and 1911 censuses through findmypast.co.uk.

Status	Finished
Effective start/end date	14/02/16 → 14/05/16
Links	http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/edwardian-postcards

Funding

AHRC: £14,501.90

Gillen, Julia (Principal Investigator)

Project relations

The Creative Exchange
Project: Research
Edwardian Postcard Project
Project: Other

Activities

Digital Humanities Research Forum
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Valuing the Visual in Literacy Research
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Digital Literacies in Education
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Community Day
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Festival/Exhibition/Concert
The Edwardian Postcard: breathing new life into early twentieth century social media
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Brighton Digital Festival
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Exploring social media in the early twentieth century: the picture postcard
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation
Writing on early twentieth century British picture postcards: through the prism of mentions of India
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
PhD examination
Activity: Examination types › Examination
Writing Edwardian Postcards: a tale of three Londoners
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
The “letter of the poor?” Investigating writing and images on the Edwardian postcard
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Webinar: Social media in the early twentieth century: postcards belonging to a young female farm worker
Activity: Other activity types › Other
Being Human Festival
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Online webinar: “Early 20th century social media: writing postcards around Lancaster and Morecambe Bay.”
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Edwardian Picture Postcard Project Lancaster Digital Collections Launch
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Kaleidoscope Histories: subtle and contradictory transitions in historical research
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
History Past, Present & Future - the IHR Centenary Festival
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Janet Carmichael and the Edwardian Postcard Project
Activity: Other activity types › Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition
Transhistorical perspectives on language, materials and corpora: Conversations about correspondence
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Podcast Julia Gillen: Chlorine and salt do not mix.
Activity: Other activity types › Other
Podcast: Edwardian Postcard episode 28 Lancaster City Museums 100 years 100 objects
Activity: Other activity types › Other
Picture postcards and the Edwardian era in Lancaster and Morecambe
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Press/Media

How early picture postcards were the Edwardian equivalent of Instagram
Press/Media: Research
Postcards provide link to Edwardian social media
Press/Media: Research
Postcards of a different time
Press/Media: Newspaper Article
Wish you were here - the Edwardians on holiday
Press/Media: Newspaper Article

Research outputs

How early picture postcards were the Edwardian equivalent of Instagram
Research output: Other contribution
The Edwardian postcard - an exploratory study
Research output: Contribution to conference - Without ISBN/ISSN › Conference paper › peer-review
“Above is the street I walk along daily”: re-examining multimodality through an examination of the “undivided back” format of early twentieth century postcards
Research output: Contribution to conference - Without ISBN/ISSN › Conference paper › peer-review
Afterword
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
Edwardian postcards revealing twentieth century English working class cultures
Research output: Contribution to conference - Without ISBN/ISSN › Conference paper › peer-review
The Edwardian Picture Postcard as a Communications Revolution: A Literacy Studies Perspective
Research output: Book/Report/Proceedings › Book

Research