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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
At the beginning of the long reign of George III, a new mass media outlet for political expression surfaced in England: the colored political and social print. These prints were first carried as a sideline at stationers and bookstores, but from the middle 1770s on their popularity was great enough to justify setting up special print shops.
The Georgian print after 1760 was different in more than color from those that had preceded it, though the use of color was indicative of the change. Artistically they were less representational, more free in line, and made heavier use of caricature in both face and body action. In content their appeal was more populist and urban than aristocratic and rural. They were also more journalistic; they focused their comment increasingly on current and often trivial political and social events and were published soon after the event occurred. In an earlier period, comment was in response to events. After George III, the commentators became established professionals seeking out events which they could make the theme of their weekly or so caricature comment. The prints also continued to be unrestrained in ridicule, attacking not only political leaders, but royalty itself. If possible, they became more unfair and calumnious than the prints of the period of the first two Georges. The prints were a part of what was evolving, I will argue, as a new democratizing force in the politics of England: a stream of mass media criticism of current political practices.
1 The development of this complex is described by Atherton. He details the rise and location of the print shops and gives a detailed discussion of artists and publishers of Georgian London and Westminster. See Chapters 1 and 2 of Atherton, Herbert M., Political Prints in the Age of Hogarth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974).Google Scholar Atherton dates the political print from the South Sea Bubble prints of the 1720s. He quotes Hogarth in 1735 that there were twelve major publishers of all types of print, but between 1727–63, according to Atherton, “many times that many shops were in some way involved in print selling,” as I will argue later, it was not, however, until caricature was introduced in the 1750s and prints were freed from the emblematic and Hogarthian influences that they caught the popular imagination and reached what can be described as a mass urban market.
2 Volumes V through XI of the Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. These volumes were edited between 1935 and 1954 by M. Dorothy George. They catalogue the most extensive collection of such prints in existence, one which most critics assume is as complete as any such human effort can be. The quality of Miss George's comment is extremely high. The data presented in this paper are from the indexes to these volumes, plus comments in her thorough and incisive introductions to each volume.
3 Material concerning the development of the print from Hogarth through Townshend is found in George, M. Dorothy, English Political Caricature, A Study of Opinion and Propaganda (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), Vol. 1, to 1792,Google Scholar chapter VI, “Hogarth and English Caricature-Mid Century Developments,” pp. 111–18, as well as in Atherton, , op. cit.Google Scholar
4 Atherton, , op. cit., chapters V and VI, pp. 106–90.Google Scholar
5 Charles Press, “American Political Symbols,” in The Political Cartoon, forthcoming from Associated University Presses, 1977.Google ScholarPubMed
6 The terms laughing satire and destructive satire are distinguished in Coupe, W. A., “Observations on a Theory of Political Caricature,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1969), pp. 79&-95.Google Scholar
7 Atherton, , op. cit., p. 267.Google Scholar
8 The ratio is based on Miss George's categorization of prints in the British Museum Catalog volumes. Miss George classifies each print as either “Political” or “Personal and Social Satires.” For brevity's sake, I will hereafter call the latter social prints.
9 The best work on Gillray is Hill, Draper, Mr. Gillray the Caricaturist (London: Phaedon, 1965).Google Scholar The work on Rowlandson that deals most fully with his political prints is still Grego, Joseph, Rowlandson the Caricaturist (London: Chatto and Winus, 1880, two vols.).Google ScholarSee also Krumbhaar, E. B., Isaac Cruikshank, A Catalogue Raisonne with a Sketch of His Life and Work (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Hill, Draper in Mr. Gillray, the Caricaturist, notes that by their tendency to run wild “The Georgian print makers seemed to a later generation to make the punishment exceed the crime and thus forfeited the status of underdog.” The comment is, however, most appropriate in respect to the generation known as Victorians.Google Scholar
11 Appropriately she was the grandmother and benefactor of a latter day cartoonist, George du Maurier of Punch. He was also author of Trilby and other novels.
12 These data confirm, at least in respect to prints, the hypothesis presented by Streicher, Lawrence H., “On a Theory of Political Caricature,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, IX, 4 (1967), pp. 427–45. He argues that caricature output responds to crises and conflict.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
