by Satirical cartoons by the prolific nineteenth-century British caricaturist and book illustrator George Cruikshank often circulated in popular periodicals, where he would ridicule all aspects of Victorian life, from social behavior and customs to fashion to medicine to politics with great success. In the late 1820s, during a period of some personal financial distress, he began self-publishing his cartoons in hopes of making more money. He published collections on Phrenological Illustrations (1826) satirizing the Victorian obsession with this pseudoscience, Illustrations of Time (1827) giving droll and punning depictions of popular sayings, and four volumes of Scraps and Sketches (1828-1832) containing various vignettes on drink, the dangers of outlandish fashion, and other subjects. Demand, however, was not as high as he had anticipated and he ceased publishing his own cartoons in the early 1830s.
The SLU Rare Books Division holds a collection of all of Cruikshank’s self-published cartoons from 1826 to 1832 bound together into a single volume. Such volumes were created by individual collectors and reflect their interests or their successes in finding Cruikshank’s published prints. Ours is complete and its original owner has also pasted or added other materials about Cruikshank into the front and back — newspaper clippings, Cruikshank’s obituary and photo, bookplates, inscriptions and a handwritten table of contents. The page edges bear smudges and general evidence of use, suggesting that this unique piece didn’t just sit on a shelf, but was actively handled and augmented over time.
