What did Charles Dickens call the booming Valentine card industry?

What did Charles Dickens call the booming Valentine card industry? He called it “Cupid’s Manufactory.”

The phrase captured the industrial scale of Victorian Valentine production. During the 19th century, printers and workshops made increasingly elaborate cards decorated with lace, ribbons, verses, flowers, and embossed paper. These were no longer necessarily handmade by the sender; they could be selected from a growing commercial market.

Cheap postage helped drive the expansion. After Britain’s 1840 postal reforms and the Penny Black, sending a Valentine became easier and more affordable. The cards could also be mailed anonymously, encouraging playful, romantic, and sometimes satirical verses.

The nickname should not be confused with a specific factory or company named Cupid’s Manufactory. It was Dickens’s descriptive expression for the expanding trade. The industry employed more than 3,000 women in manufacturing, illustrating how Valentine customs intersected with Victorian print culture and women’s paid work.