The Golden Temple, Amritzar

One of the earliest postcards of India published by a British-based firm, F. Hartmann & Co. in London (India-based British firms had been publishing postcards of India since about 1897). Frederick Hartmann used this card in a full page advertisement in the February 1903 issue of The Picture Postcard an early collector magazine edited by E. W. Richardson that helped make the new printed postcard product popular in Britain after it had already become well-established in continental Europe and British India. Hartmann himself had helped to lobby the British government to allow the "divided back" postcard, which allowed a message as well as address to be written on the front, to be legalized in 1902, and it was in December of that year when he first announced his forthcoming "India Views," of "marvelous and unequalled sights of the INDIAN EMPIRE, beautifully illustrated on POST-CARDS."