The second chapter explores how literary writing in the Romantic period denies and decries caricature. I describe a ’caricature talk’, dominated by anti-caricature rhetoric, that seeks to establish the quality, verisimilitude and representational justice of textual characterisations; and I explore how caricature talk constitutes formal realism in the literary criticism of the Romantic period. The second part of the chapter positions imaginative literary caricature in relation to anxiety about prospographic and personal caricature describing real people, providing essential context for Chapter 3’s discussion of character originality and realism.