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Illustrating Victorian Society
From: The British Library
| By:
Morna Daniels |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
As the population grew rapidly in Victorian England, the British became more and more fascinated by their own society. Revolutions in the printing process allowed a new kind of star to be born--the illustrator. Today, far fewer venues exist for this form of clever satire and acute observation, but we are still the richer for the careers of Richard Doyle, W.M. Thackeray, W.S. Gilbert, Kate Greenaway, Hugh Thomson, Gustave Doré, George Cruikshank, John Leech and many others. British Library curator Morna Daniels introduces us to several of these characters and their work. |
  s the nineteenth century progressed, levels of literacy were greatly extended in the British population. Church members were active in the Sunday school movement and in the provision of local elementary schools, through the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 provided schools and educational legislation, while the 1876 act made attendance compulsory. Thus an ever-growing market was provided for publications which the mechanisation of printing were making cheaper. The serial publication of the novels of Dickens and others in weekly parts made them accessible to many, and increasing use of illustration made them attractive to all levels. The abolition of stamp duty made periodicals cheaper and many new titles appeared aimed at a range of readership. |
Dickens reflected a growing concern about social issues, and the fact that his depictions of poverty, crime and misfortune lead to strongly melodramatic story lines made him the most popular writer of his time. Many gently satirical novels and periodicals appeared. Favourite targets were social climbers, the "servant problem" and women's fashions like the crinoline. The Aesthetic movement was another "safe" target, and there were only occasional forays into more serious social problems like the overworked and underpaid needlewomen in the dress trade. |
The early popularity of Charles Dickens was greatly enhanced by his illustrators. The publishers Chapman & Hall were looking for someone to write a novel around a series of illustrations to be drawn by R.S. Seymour, the popular sporting artist. They picked Charles Dickens, then 23, and already known as a journalist and author of periodical sketches. The title The Adventures of the Nimrod Club was suggested. Dickens proved less pliable than hoped. He jettisoned Seymour's idea of a tall, thin sporting hero, and decided on a comic, plump Londoner whom he called Pickwick. |
On 20 April 1836, having drawn seven plates, Seymour committed suicide. Another artist, R.S. Buss, proved unsatisfactory, and Dickens likewise rejected the offerings of Thackeray and John Leech. Dickens chose the 20-year-old Hablot Knight Browne, whom he felt he could dominate. Browne abandoned his first pen name, "Nemo," for "Phiz," to match the name "Boz" used by Dickens. Dickens introduced a new character, Sam Weller, who was portrayed with great liveliness by Phiz, and soon 40,000 copies of each issue were being sold and a great partnership was formed. |
At the same time, however, Dickens was working with another much older artist. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) had made his reputation during the Regency with his satirical cartoons and with the characters Tom and Jerry, two Regency rakes who figured in Pierce Egan's Life in London. He was commissioned by Macrone, the publisher, to illustrate some collected pieces by Dickens which were published under the title Sketches by Boz. Dickens was then given the job of editing a new magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, by the owner Richard Bentley. Part of the contract was the provision of a novel, and Dickens began to issue Oliver Twist from February 1837, with a plate by Cruikshank for each instalment. Unfortunately, Dickens and Cruikshank fell out over the last plate and never collaborated again. |
 The success in Paris of the humorous periodical Charivari, begun in 1832, tempted Henry Mayhew, a journalist, Joseph Last, a printer, and Ebenezer Landells, an engraver, to attempt an imitation in 1841, which they called Punch. Despite poor illustrations, it was moderately successful, but not enough to break even. It was taken over by one of its unpaid printers, Bradbury and Evans, and Mark Lemon became the editor. Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold joined the staff. |
Richard Doyle learned how to draw on wood from Joseph Swain, now Punch's engraver, and joined the staff in 1843 at the age of only 19. He shared the weekly political cartoon with John Leech, but social cartoons were his forte. "Ye manners & customs of ye Englyshe," rather crowded pictures of society, were very successful. He then created a comic trio of bachelors-about-town, Brown, Jones and Robinson, whose attempts to break into fashionable London society are foiled by disasters. A successful album, The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones & Robinson (1854), was based on Doyle's own trip abroad with two friends from Punch. |
 The artist who personified Punch, however, was John Leech. His father had run a coffee-house on Ludgate Hill before going bankrupt, and Leech soon learned to draw the characters who flocked there. Nearby were the great coaching inns, and Leech developed a passion for horses. Later in life his enthusiasm for hunting strained his resources considerably. His drawings earned him enough to settle down to a conventional middle-class life with a pretty wife whom he frequently portrayed. He depicted the small problems of middle-class life, beginning with a series called Domestic bliss portraying a helpless wife and a tormented husband. Flunkeiana and Servantgalism depicted the snobbery and insubordination of servants. The arrival of Leech's children prompted The Rising Generation and a book, Young Troublesome, or Master Jacky's Holidays. |
 Leech gave himself a chance to draw horses when he invented the character of Mr Briggs, an accident-prone rider to hounds. Robert Surtees, a sporting journalist, created the figure of Jorrocks in the New Sporting Magazine and wrote a novel around him in 1843, Handley Cross or Mr Jorrocks' Hunt. Leech was suggested as illustrator, but he asked for six guineas a picture, and the cheaper Phiz won the commission. However, after the success of Leech's pictures for Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour in 1840, he was chosen to illustrate a new edition of Handley Cross. Of Mr Sponge, Leech had written: "Red is a very taking colour with our craft.... I think it will be as well to have as many hunting (scenes) as we can." The red paint was liberally applied for Mr Jorrocks. |
 Leech was a friend of Thackeray's from his schooldays at Charterhouse. Thackeray had started his career as a journalist and then tried to make a living as a painter in Paris. Having acquired a wife to support he had to return to London for a steadier income from writing, first for Eraser's Magazine and then for Punch. He illustrated most of his articles as he did his greatest novel, Vanity Fair, published in parts from 1847 to 1848. In 1860 he became the first editor of the Cornhill Magazine and gave kindly encouragement to young artists like Frederick Walker, who redrew Thackeray's rather weak illustrations for his novel The Adventures of Philip. |
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| W.S. Gilbert. Bab ballads (Routledge, 1851). Illustrations by the author. The ghost, the gallant, the gael and the goblin. Wood engraving. | |
William Schwenk Gilbert was another author-illustrator. He earned his living by the law, but in 1861 began to contribute comic verse to Fun magazine. He used the pseudonym "Bab," and the collected verse was published in 1860 as the Bab Ballads, with illustrations by the author. Such was their success that More Bab Ballads appeared in 1873. Gilbert wrote several plays before Thespis launched his collaboration with Sullivan in 1871. |
Gustave Doré, although a French artist, visited London every year to exhibit his paintings, and he illustrated a number of books in English.  A self-taught infant prodigy, he supported himself by his periodical illustrations while still in his teens. His first humorous book illustrations for an edition of Rabelais in 1854 established his reputation, and he illustrated 119 books in all. |
His friend Blanchard Jerrold wrote the text for their joint work London; A Pilgrimage (1872), which covered every part of London and provided the best-known images of Victorian poverty. His output of drawings was prodigious and he was a great success in London society, yet he died bitterly disappointed by his failure to be recognised as a great painter in oils. |
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| Kate Greenaway. The Quiver of Love, edited by W.J. Loftie (Marcus Ward, 1876). A collection of valentines. Chromolithograph. | |
Kate Greenaway was the daughter of a draughtsman and engraver, John Greenaway. She was born in Hoxton, though family financial difficulties forced the family to move to Islington. She studied at the National Art Training School in the South Kensington Museum. Some of her drawings were displayed in the Dudley Gallery in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, where they caught the eye of the Rev. W.J. Loftie, who bought them for the People's Magazine, which he edited. Among her early freelance commissions were calendars and valentine cards for Marcus Ward & Co., the Belfast chromolithographers who also had a London office. The valentines were republished in a book, The Quiver of Love, in 1876, together with pictures by Walter Crane, though their work is difficult to tell apart at this early stage in their respective careers. Kate Greenaway's runaway success as a children's illustrator came after Edmund Evans printed her Under the Window in 1878. |
 Hugh Thomson, an Irishman, began his career with an apprenticeship to Marcus Ward & Co. in Belfast. In 1884 he moved to London to join The English Illustrated Magazine, which was owned by Macmillan. Randolph Caldecott, the illustrator of children's books, was already on the staff, and Thomson was influenced by his style. Thomson illustrated a series on the character Sir Roger de Coverley and one on Coaching Days and Ways, both later published as books, and both giving an opportunity for the depiction of horses, at which he excelled. |
Macmillan had already published two volumes by Washington Irving in a small neat format, with gold-stamped green cloth covers and line drawings by Caldecott. They commissioned Thomson to illustrate another volume in the same style, The Vicar of Wakefield, published in 1890. This was so successful that Thomson went on to illustrate Cranford in 1891 and Our Village in 1893, all produced in the same format. Since Thomson was now working freelance, George Alien poached him to illustrate a fine edition of Pride and Prejudice, with a splendid peacock design in gold on the green cloth cover. Macmillan retaliated by securing Thomson to illustrate the other five Austen novels in 1896 and 1897. |
Thomson's style of illustration became known as the "Cranford" school after his success with Mrs Gaskell's novel of that name in 1891. C.E. Brock was one of its later exponents. It reflects a nostalgia for the "good old days" before the industrialisation of the 1830s. The drawings have a gentle humour and great delicacy. |
Thomson also used little drawings to decorate the contents pages. He extended his range to colour work after the turn of the century, when the fashion began for books with tipped-in colour plates produced by the halftone process, but the increase in size and the colours which obscured his delicate lines detracted from the charm of his work. |
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