2-889-547 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Grocer's Shop at Christmas - drawn by Foster, 1850. Shoppers queuing to buy dried fruit to make plum puddings. Illustration to a story by John Oxenford. 'Fine combinations of saccharine splendour for the eyes; Kings and Queens, ill-formed but gorgeously gilt and frosted for the eyes; pippin-paste involved into curious scrolls...But the interest of the Grocer's shop on Christmas Eve penetrates far more deeply into the soul of the surveying crowd. Many, many of them...hope to share practically in the boiled luxury...[The plum pudding] does not represent a class or a caste, but the bulk of the English nation. There is not a man, woman, or child...that does not expect to taste a plum-pudding of some sort or other on Christmas Day. The admiration paid to the Grocer's shop-window on Christmas Eve is easily explained, when we regard the plum-pudding as the great national symbol...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.