Useful Frames and Dead Pasteboard

Sarah Hook looks at Victorian photographic card portraits, and
charts their appearances in novels and poems from the period. She
tells the story of loving and burning card portraits, which were
widely circulated in nineteenth-century society and became objects
of intense feeling in Thomas Hardy’s writing. All images of Thomas
Hardy used in this presentation are from the National Portrait
Gallery, London: Thomas Hardy, by (Mary) Olive Edis (Mrs
Galsworthy). Bromide print, 1923. NPGx17356. Thomas Hardy, by
Francis Henry Hart, for Elliott & Fry, published by Ogden's.
Cigarette card, 1894, published c. 1895-1907. NPG x136531. Thomas
Hardy, by Henry Walter ('H. Walter') Barnett. Whole-plate glass
negative, 1909. NPG x81696. Thomas Hardy, by (Mary) Olive Edis (Mrs
Galsworthy). Bromide print, 1914. NPGx17363. Sarah Hook is a DPhil
candidate at Wolfson College, Oxford, researching the links between
Victorian writers and the language and spaces of portraiture in the
mid- to late nineteenth century."