Paper doll set:Merry Marion

London publisher Raphael Tuck & Sons boasted on its many and diverse products: "By Special Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen." The firm began in 1866 when Raphael Tuck, uprooted by wars in his Prussian homeland, settled in England with his wife and seven children and began a small business selling prints and frames in a shop on London's Union Street. Tuck and his wife Ernestine grew the business, expanding its offerings to include lithographs, postcards, greeting cards, Christmas cards, scrap, illustrated story books, paper toys, and novelty paper items. From the small shop that the Tucks opened in the 1860s, the company expanded in the 20th century to include offices in Paris, Berlin, New York, and Montreal. Three of Tuck's sons joined the business and continued its operations into the Second World War, when the German bombings of London destroyed the company's main offices on December 29, 1940. Raphael Tuck & Sons survived the war, but by the 1960s, it was absorbed by the British Printing Corporation.