When Rowland Hill introduced the Mulready Envelope and Lettersheet to the world on 6 May 1840 they were immediately ridiculed in the press. Some early users of the envelopes embellished the design with comic additions and the satirists and caricaturists of the time developed and published their own versions of the Mulready. Since its publication in 1984, the “bible” on this subject has been British Pictorial Envelopes of the 19th Century by Bodily Jarvis and Hahn (BJH). This new work sets out to update the information in the BJH book with much more detail on the varied states and printings of these caricatures by the different publishers. BJH listed 305 different copies in 145 different states; we now include 941 copies in 207 states and provide a census of all known recorded copies of Mulready caricatures.
Extensive research into the sale of these caricatures through examination of over 22,500 historical auction house catalogues and from handling many of these items over the past 20 years has enabled us to now record that around 10% of copies have been adjusted in some way. Victorians tended to collect stamps rather than covers, so some caricatures that were held in scrap books have had replacement stamps added, and our research enables the collector to see this “before and after” provenance for the first time. We include in this book 2392 images as colour illustrations of all known copies and an indication of where adjustments have been made to the envelopes. It is hoped that this new detailed information will provide the next “bible” for collection and understanding of these fascinating envelopes.