So competitive was the new trade that, as Tara Moore writes in Victorian Christmas in Print, even Alfred, Lord Tennyson was given 1,000 guineas to write a Christmas card poem.

A Victorian Christmas card, one of the first sent in Britain, has sold for a record £22,500 at auction. The 1843 print was expected to fetch up to £12,000 at the sale in Devizes, Wiltshire, on 24 ...