Modern St. Valentine's Day is an annual celebration occurring on February 14th. As a general celebration of love, activities can range from school children exchanging small paper cards with affectionate messages and candy, to adults participating in romantic dates, gift giving in the form of flowers, candy, jewelry and other small tokens, and loving declarations and affirmations of all kinds. Many participate in alternate celebrations for friendship and familial love rather than romantic love, such as "Galentine's Day", friendship dances, random acts of kindness, etc. Valentine's day is often criticized for being overtly commercialized and exercising unnecessary societal pressure on one's romantic life, so there is growing effort to celebrate compassionate, unconditional, and humanitarian love.
For more information about the history, origins and cultural influence of St. Valentine's Day, check out these resources and more!
General Information - Wikipedia
General Information - Britannica.com
Saint Valentine (origins) - Wikipedia
Article - Hallowe'en and Valentine: The Culture of Saints' Days in the English Speaking World
Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies and the Coca-Cola Company by
Year after year, many of us continue to perform holiday rituals with little or no understanding of what they mean or what purpose they serve. A part of us yearns to understand how and why these special days originated. Why does Groundhog Day exist and what does it have to do with the Virgin Mary and menstruation? What does May Day have to do with a celebration of human sexuality and Roman prostitutes? Where did Valentine's Day come from OCo did the greeting card, chocolate, and florist companies create it, or is there something original, pure, and maybe even carnal about it?"
Valentine’s Day 2021 – Victorian Greeting Cards (2011-39)
For Valentine’s Day the U of R Archives would like to share a sample of our Victorian greeting card collection in the style of paper lace. Paper lace in Victorian times was created through processes of perforating, cutting out, and embossing paper to imitate embroidery or lace. Other scraps or bits of silk were also incorporated into the cards as further adornment and may also include embossed chromolithographed prints fixed to the front of the cards. Some cards also had, at one time, a perfumed sachet within or may have once been mounted in a decorated box.
Image credit: U of R Archives 2011-39 Box 1 File 6 Victorian Greeting Cards
The Importance of Being Earnest and Related Writings by
This edition of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest locates his writings within the broader cultural concerns of his day and examines Wilde's aestheticism, his sexual politics, his socialist ideas, and his allegiances to Irish nationalism,
A Midsummer Night's Dream by 
Wuthering Heights by
The immortal story of love and obsession in the North of England Atop the stormy Yorkshire moors sits Wuthering Heights, a manor inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw and their two children, Catherine and Hindley. The fate of the manor, and the family that lives in it, is forever changed when the Earnshaws adopt a dark-skinned orphan boy named Heathcliff. As the years pass, Heathcliff and Catherine fall deeply in love, but even their great passion cannot survive the pressures of society and the black force of jealousy. Driven away by a broken heart, Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights only to return years later, bent on the cruelest kind of revenge. Published just one year before Emily Brontë's untimely death, her only novel shocked Victorian reviewers with its vivid depictions of passion and brutality. It is now considered a masterpiece of English literature and one of the most enduring romances of all time. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Jane Eyre by 
Romeo and Juliet by Lady Chatterley's Lover by 
