Eminent Victorian Cartoonists Volume I: The Founders

Abstract

Volume I of Eminent Victorian Cartoonists - 'The Founders' - examines the life and work of the three cartoonists who transformed graphic satire from the bawdiness of the Georgian and Regency period, to the respectable art-form of the Victorian era. Harnessing new technologies, John 'HB' Doyle (1797-1868) not only founded a new form of political comic art, but also founded a dynasty of artistic and literary giants (including 'Dickie' Doyle, Henry Doyle, and Arthur Conan Doyle). John Leech (1817-1864) created the first 'cartoon' to be so called for the new weekly magazine, Punch; and brought to cartooning and illustration the status of 'high art'. And Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) largely defined the shape of the political cartoon, world-wide, across a remarkable career of fifty years. Each of these pioneers stood at the centre of a vibrant world of art and literature (counting the likes of Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, and Lewis Carroll as friends and collaborators), and their collective biography reveals exciting new aspects of the social, cultural, and political life of the Victorian Age.