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A Nice Lady |
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Travelling
in England |
The Opera
Boxes |
Fashionables
of 1818 |
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One of England's best known comic artists, George Cruikshank (1792-1878)
started as a political satirist during the Regency and made his
reputation as a book illustrator during the Victorian period. His savage
attacks on the corrupt government and scandalous conduct of the Prince Regent
circulated widely in his day, and reached a peak of virulence in cheap political
tracts like William Hone's Political House that Jack Built (1819),
which sold a hundred thousand copies. But he is
probably best known for his brief and tempestous collaboration with Dickens on
bestselling serial fiction, namely
Sketches by Boz (1836) and Oliver Twist (1837-39).
The Library has been building an archive of Cruikshank books, prints, and
drawings since 1913, when Richard Waln Meirs, Class of 1888, presented his
collection to the University. The Library now has about five hundred books,
five hundred prints, sketchbooks, drawings, and an extensive run of
correspondence in the Manuscripts Division (C0256). For more information about
Princeton's holdings see E. D. H. Johnson, "The George Cruikshank Collection at
Princeton," The Princeton University Library Chronicle 85
(1973-74): 1-33.
Certain universal ideas predominate in this business. Cartoonists tackle many
of the same subjects, each approaching them in a different style. Like
Rowlandson, Cruikshank made light of contemporary fashion, travel, politics, and
manners.