Rowlandson the Caricaturist; A Selection from His Works. Vol. 1

Joseph Grego's 1880 volume serves as both celebration and serious critical appraisal of Thomas Rowlandson, the 18th-century draftsman whose rapid, fluid pen captured the corrupt politics, garish fashion, and laughing-stock absurdities of Georgian and Regency England. Grego traces Rowlandson's trajectory from precocious student at the Royal Academy to prolific illustrator whose license to mock seemed nearly limitless, producing thousands of prints that slaked the public's thirst for visual satire. The anecdotal descriptions that accompany each plate reveal Grego's intimate familiarity with Rowlandson's world: the patrons who commissioned flattering portraits while secretly enjoying being caricatured, the politicians whose grotesque physiognomies became shorthand for their moral failings, the tavern scenes and auction houses where English eccentricity flourished. This is not mere cataloguing but a portrait of an age that loved to laugh at itself, rendered through an artist whose wit never devolved into cruelty. The book appeals to anyone curious about how image-making shaped public consciousness before photography, and how comedy served as a safety valve for social tensions that might otherwise have exploded.