George Cruikshank's Life, Times and Art : Volume II: 1835-1878

A biography of the political and social artist who became representative of nineteenth-century Britain. George Cruikshank's (1792-1878) etchings and wood-engravings graced the pages of such classics as Grimms' Fairy Tales and Dickens' Oliver Twist, campaigned in the propaganda war against Napoleon, and satirised his times, becoming representative of the age. His life crossed paths with Britain's primary political, social, and cultural leaders, yet he experienced a long struggle for recognition of his imaginative, versatile and incisive images. In the concluding volume of this comprehensive biography, Patten examines Cruikshank's collaborations with renowned writers such as Harrison Ainsworth, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Focussing on his illustrated periodicals, including the long-standing Comic Almanack, as well as his advocacy of Temperance, Patten sketches the context of Cruikshank's art through his subjects, motifs, mediums, treatments, publishers and audiences. Engaging with the contradictory and crisis-filled latter years of Cruikshank's life, Patten reveals the great artist's refashioning in the Victorian Era.