From Your Valentine
 Roselynn Ederer
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Thomastown Publishing
  ISBN: 0971584834
Amazon's price is: $15.95

Valentines from the Past. For centuries, friends have been making & exchanging tokens of affection in each culture that celebrates this holiday.

From Roselynn Ederer's Introduction: “A study of antique valentines...can tell us what we were, where we were, what we have become. We can peek into life long ago...and learn how people dressed, what their daily activities, their language, and their thoughts were. We can get a glimpse of a culture from another time.”

In A History of St. Valentine's Day, we learn about what the young men of the Roman Empire used to do to declare their passion for young maidens, & about the young man, in early Christendom, who was the first to sign: “From Your Valentine.”

We also are introduced to Louis Prang, a Bavarian immigrant who started, in 1856, a lithographic business in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which was one of the first companies to produce a line of interchangeable Christmas & Valentine cards, the cover text changing according to the holiday.

Page after page, with historical notations, we can peruse, in full, luscious color, the sentimental, poignant art of long ago. Displaying lavish lace & vivid violets, bright red hearts & chubby cherubs, & sometimes painfully sappy verses, an array of emotional missives from America & Europe unfolds before our eyes -- some complex montages while others are quaintly simple. As the years progress, the cherubs give way to courting couples, raucous cartoons, & sensitive florals.

From Your Valentine: Valentines from the Past is a labor of love & a treasure trove of the history of cultural art from the middle 1800s, through the turn of the century, into the 1920s, the 1930s, showing little farmer boys, Welsh misses, children dressing up, showing the changing styles in clothing, toys & furniture -- through WWII & up to the 1950s.

If you're looking for an enduring gift with no calories to offer the ones you love, then From Your Valentine will fit the bill!

I wanted this slim, large book to go on forever & ever, very well done!

More from Roselynn Ederer: Thomas Township: Michigan (Images of America)
(02/02/03)

Rebecca