The Victorians loved the festive season and created a new tradition of sending Christmas cards by important illustrators such as Kate Greenaway and Alice Havers. Victorian cards often included the bizarre and creepy with everything from murderous mice to feisty frogs marking the season. So, just why were Victorian Christmas cards so odd? Join Dr Emma Liggins and Dr Rachel Dickinson to celebrate the weird and wonderful of this most Victorian of Christmas traditions.

This event is being run in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections Museum as part of a project to promote and celebrate some of the 32,000 cards from their Laura Seddon Collection of Victorian and Edwardian Greetings Cards. The Laura Seddon Collection is one of the largest, and most comprehensive, sources for the study of 19th century greetings cards, and holds some of the earliest and rarest examples of commercial cards.