Dance cards, late 19th. century.

Dance cards, late 19th. century. They are all in excellent condition apart from one, which has had the pencil and string pulled out of it. Some have their string and pencil whereas others don’t and one or two never had pencils at all. The average size is 4 x 2.5 inches.
They came from a retired auctioneer and he had bought them as a collection along with the 4 cards I’ve listed on this site.Fold-out cards, c.1910. and some calendars. Calendar. Raphael Tuck, 1899.
They are also called ‘carnets de bal’ as a habit of the times was to give things a French name to make them sound more exotic. These look like they were all from the same period and I think that they may be from the same girl (or 2). She kept her dance cards and now we don’t know anything about her.

They are in the Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane late Victorian style of drawing which was extremely popular at the time, especially with children’s books. I imagine that these cards were aimed primarily at adolescent girls.
They would make a good collecting theme if only for the window into a certain sector of Victorian society.

http://uk.pinterest.com have some good examples of Victorian dance cards.