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Primary Source Sets
Victorian Era
A chromolithograph print called “Making the Scrap Book,” 1868.

A chromolithograph print called “Making the Scrap Book,” 1868.

This vividly colored print of an 1865 Juliana Oakley painting, displayed in a fancy silver frame, shows a young girl absorbed in the task of cutting a paper image to paste into a nearby scrapbook. The girl wears a white dress with a blue sash and matching hair ribbon, white stockings, and black leather shoes with ankle straps. She sits alone in a room on a high-backed upholstered chair, her feet resting on a tufted footstool, surrounded by objects, furniture, and pictures that symbolize art and learning. Making a scrapbook was likely seen as an ideal task for a girl’s cultural education. Her task also suggests the importance of memory and sentimentality in the Victorian era. The print could serve as an affordable art object in itself for middle-class homes.

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Citation Information
Oakley, Juliana, and Louis Kurz, “Chromolithograph, Making the Scrap Book,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/5984744430035c9331f860842d70f3a2.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center via Smithsonian Institution.

Tips for Students

For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

Item 3 of 14 in the Primary Source Set Victorian Era

Previous ItemNext Item
A photograph of a Victorian home interior in Kenosha, Wisconsin, ca. 1890.
A tortoiseshell calling card case from the mid-nineteenth century.
A chromolithograph print called “Making the Scrap Book,” 1868.
An African American family record chart, 1880.
An excerpt from The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility, 1859.
A print depicting a Victorian couple in love, 1850s.
A photographic portrait of Queen Victoria.
A commemorative hair and yarn wreath from Wisconsin, ca. 1879.
A post-mortem photograph of Samuel Charles Stowe, son of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1849.
A photograph of Victoria Terminus Railway Station in Mumbai (Bombay), India.
An excerpt from the London Exhibition’s “New Crystal Palace Polka,” 1851.
A dedication and poem from Victoria Regia: a Volume of Original Contributions in Poetry and Prose, 1861.
A photograph of the University of Pennsylvania cricket team, 1887.
An advertisement for Dr. Scott’s Electric Corset, 1883.

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