The world's first Christmas card to go on display in new Charles Dickens Museum exhibition

The world’s first ever printed Christmas card is going on show in a new exhibition.

Only 1,000 copies of the hand-coloured card, which cost a shilling, were made for Christmas 1843 but it did not take off and it was another five years before the next appeared starting a tradition that continues to this day.

The card, which shows a family celebrating the festive season, was the idea of inventor and civil servant Henry Cole who is one of the founders of the V&A museum.

It will go on show, alongside an original proof copy, at the Charles Dickens Museum as part of a show examining how the novelist changed the way we think about Christmas.

Other exhibits being shown in the building in Doughty Street in Holborn include early sketches for the illustrations of his classic festive tale A Christmas Carol which was first published the year the card was sent and a series of ornately decorated books published to cash in on the growing Christmas market.

Beautiful Books: Dickens and the Business of Christmas runs from November 20.