A short history
A short history of the postcard
From the plain cards of the 1890s to the glossy seaside greetings of the late twentieth century - how a small piece of cardboard quietly carried everyday life through the post.
1894 – 1899
The plain card
In 1894 the British Post Office finally allowed privately printed picture cards to be sent through the post. They were small, stiff and a little austere - one side for the address, the other for a tiny image and just enough room for a sentence or two. People sent them mostly because they were cheap: a halfpenny stamp, against a full penny for a sealed letter.
1899 – 1902
The court card gives way
The early 'court card' size was replaced in 1899 by a larger standard shape, closer to what we'd recognise today. Publishers leapt at the new format. Suddenly there was room for a proper picture - a seafront, a high street, a country lane - and the postcard quietly stopped being stationery and started being a souvenir.
1902 – 1914
The golden age
When the Post Office introduced the divided back in 1902, everything changed. The address went on one half, the message on the other, and the entire front was free for an image. Within a few years, posting a card became part of daily life. Several deliveries a day in cities meant you could write 'meet me at three' in the morning and expect the recipient to read it before lunch. Billions of cards crossed Britain in this period - seaside views, comic cards, family snapshots, theatre stars, royal occasions.
1914 – 1918
Cards from the war
The First World War turned the postcard into something tender. Silk embroidered cards were sent home from France by soldiers who couldn't say very much else. Field service cards offered pre-printed lines - 'I am quite well', 'I have been admitted into hospital' - to be ticked or crossed out. The handwriting on the back is often only a name and a date, but those few marks carried whole families through the week.
1920s – 1930s
Between the wars
Photography softened. Real photographic postcards, printed from glass plate negatives, captured small towns and village events with extraordinary clarity. Holiday traditions grew: Blackpool, Brighton, the Isle of Wight, Margate. The seaside comic postcard - a little ruder each decade - found its audience. Cards were no longer a necessity, but they were still woven into how people travelled.
1940s – 1950s
Wartime and after
Paper rationing during the Second World War shrank the industry, and many printers never came back at the same scale. But the habit endured. Post-war holidaymakers wrote home from rebuilt resorts, often on slightly grainy cards printed in muted colours - the look of an austere, hopeful decade.
1960s – 1980s
Bright colour, package holidays
Cheap colour printing and the package holiday made the postcard glossy and global. Suddenly cards arrived back in Britain from Benidorm, Corfu, Tunisia and Florida. The messages got shorter, the exclamation marks longer. 'Hot here!! Drinks £1!! Back Tuesday xx' is its own small literary form.
1990s – today
The slow farewell
Email, then texts, then photos sent instantly from a phone - each one chipped away at the reason to buy a stamp. Shops that once spun racks of cards now keep a quiet shelf near the till. And yet people still write them. A postcard chosen, written in a café, posted from somewhere far away, and arriving on a kitchen table a week later, is still one of the kindest small things one person can send another.
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