The final chapter will examine twenty-first-century novels by Reza Negarestani, Stephen King and Nnedi Okorafor, in order to assess whether the “turn” towards Enlightenment horror identified in this book is likely to prove an enduring phenomenon or whether its moment might now already be passed, as memories of the hopes and fears provoked in equal measure by the Promethean ambitions of Modernist practitioners and theorists begin to fade with time, with the Golden Age of Western capitalism (as the historian Eric Hobsbawm termed it) receding ever further into the past.

During the first two decades of the eighteenth century, Antoine Watteau gave Pierrot, a stock character from the Comédie Italienne, an iconic figure, the origins and the legacy which this book will trace. The book will argue that Pierrot, as visualised by Watteau, addresses the viewer in the manner of the marketplace, which is also the manner of theatricality. The introduction establishes the book’s understanding of the marketplace as a real and imagined forum for social life, in which the encounter between persons takes the form of a theatrical exchange of fronts. Visual art has a particular relationship to the expression of the social front, the superficial aspects of which are performed by media like painting, drawing, print, and photography. Pierrot is at the heart of this interrelationship, which he sets forth through his costume. Theatricality as a disposition of outwardness has been the object of study both by historians of theatre and art historians. The introduction explores these different approaches, noting that the anti-theatrical prejudice in French art criticism has an underlying relationship to a critique of the marketplace. The introduction also introduces the term ‘repertoire’ to describe the body of material upon which the book’s argument is based.

This brief chapter concludes the book with a discussion of a photograph by Eugène Atget showing a mannequin in white linens. Pierrot’s relationship to the herm, a sculpture indicating a boundary as well as the presence of a marketplace, is also discussed.

In this chapter the author examines in detail Gould’s contributions to three periodicals as well as his relationship to their owners: Henry Labouchère’s Truth (1879–95); Thomas Gibson Bowles’s Vanity Fair (1879, 1890–99); and George Newnes’s The Strand Magazine (1893–1902). There then follows a discussion of Gould’s parodies and pastiches. The first two were inspired by Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel’s ‘Alice’ books: The Westminster Alice (1900–2), with a text by ‘Saki’ (H.H. Munro); and John Bull’s Adventures in the Fiscal Wonderland (1903), with a text by Charles Geake. Then come the three political versions of Dr Heinrich Hoffman’s German comic book Struwwelpeter. These were The Political Struwwelpeter (1899), The Struwwelpeter Alphabet (1900) and Great Men (1901), each with texts by E.H. Begbie. Finally comes an examination of Gould’s own three-volume version of the works of Sir John Froissart’s medieval chronicles, entitled Froissart’s Modern Chronicles (1902, 1903, 1908), which tell the tale of recent political events as if they had happened in the fourteenth century.

The author begins with the question: ‘What made Gould’s cartoons so good?’ He answers it by applauding his ability to get a likeness (especially at a time when press photography was rare) and his skill at ‘getting to the nub of an issue’, adding that Gould was ‘essentially a journalist who draws his leading articles instead of writing them’. He also used a wide range of imagery, which the author arranges into eight categories (broadly coinciding with those in E.H. Gombrich’s classic essay ‘The Cartoonist’s Armoury’). These are: 1) Common cultural references; 2) Everyday images and figures of speech; 3) Occupations (policeman, farmer); 4) Sport and games (swimming, chess, football); 5) Topical events (e.g. St Valentine’s Day, the Great Comet of 1895, Suffragettes); 6) Theatre/literature/visual arts; 7) History and 8) Animals. He also notes that Gould’s humour was an important contribution to his success. As the cartoonist himself said ‘I etch with vinegar, not vitriol’. The author concludes that ‘His geniality, courtesy, gentle caricature, lack of malice, all point towards the wry smile. His strength is in the humour of incongruity – the disiy of unexpected aptness in incongruous comparisons, the more unlikely the funnier.’

After a brief account of Gould’s later years the author considers why Gould seems to have been overlooked in the history of graphic satire. He cites Punch as being ‘the best example of an afterlife’ as its contents have frequently been recycled, and adds: ‘If Gould had been a Punch contributor, he too would surely have been anthologized and have joined the company of those such as Sambourne and Raven-Hill for whose reputations Punch is a principal reference.’ In addition, ‘the First World War blew Gould’s world to bits’ and most of the publications for which he worked are now long gone. However, the author also argues that a cartoonist’s afterlife ‘includes a recognition by later generations first that he was an influence over his contemporaries – setting a style of draughtsmanship for his own times, perhaps; or defining the accepted cartoon version of a prime minister; or even stretching the frontiers of acceptable imagery. […] Second is the recognition, […] that he is a reliable guide to people’s priorities and what they thought at the time about the world around them: the enduring value of “getting to the nub of things”. In these matters of influence Gould’s importance is not in doubt. Not for long was he a major model for style […] But twentieth-century political cartoonists on daily papers were treading in Gould’s footsteps. What Gould lacks is a more widespread recognition and respect for his importance in the development of the modern political cartoon.’