Eminent Victorian Cartoonists Volume II: The Rivals of Mr 'Punch'

Abstract

Volume II of Eminent Victorian Cartoonists explores the life-stories of five little-known cartoonists, who rivalled Sir John Tenniel and the men of Punch during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Matt Morgan (1837-1890) created sensational cartoons for Fun, Judy, and The Tomahawk (daring even to attack Queen Victoria herself), before decamping to the United States. John Proctor (1836-1914) and William Henry Boucher (1837-1906) gave Conservatism its popular voice, in Judy, Will O' The Wisp, and Moonshine. Fred Barnard (1846-1896) straddled the worlds of book illustration and weekly political cartooning in masterly fashion; in the process becoming perhaps Dickens's definitive illustrator. And John Gordon Thomson (1841-1923) imagined the Victorian political stage on a weekly basis for over two decades (at The Graphic and Fun). Like their better-known counterparts, these men were pivotal to the artistic and literary worlds they inhabited, and their collected biographies shed new light on this compelling period of history.