The Efflorescence of Caricature, 1759-1838

Abstract

This book consists of ten papers presented at a conference held during the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference of 2006 in Montreal. Despite Todd Porterfield's commendable attempt to draw some sense of coherence, ‘efflorescence’ remains a vague and somewhat all-inclusive term, the papers exist largely in isolation from one another and certain contributors may, to an extent, contradict one another. There is not necessarily anything wrong with this, and it has resulted in a diverse collection of chapters from an international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational range of scholars that deal with the general subject of caricature in a variety of ways. The roughly chronological ordering of the chapters has the unfortunate consequence that the volume begins with one of its less weighty contributions. Dominic Hardy assesses George Townshend's satirical sketches of his commander-in-chief, General James Wolfe, distributed to fellow officers during the 1759 campaign for Quebec. As opposed to the London and Paris print trades which dominate most studies of the genre, this brief investigation provides an example of caricature circulation on a much smaller, more personal scale, and in a foreign environment. The sketches themselves, however, do not do much more than confirm the view that, before his martyrdom, Wolfe was not considered the noble hero as immortalised by Benjamin West, and Hardy's suggestion that Townshend's drawings may have been among West's source material remains speculative.