The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England

The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England Cindy McCreery Clarendon Pres 50 [pound sterling] ISBN 0 19 926/56 1

Women naturally featured real strongly in the numerous satirical prints issued in late-eighteenth-century London. Although there has in novel years been an increased interest in satires, there has hitherto been no specialised close attention of this topic. Although the purpose of this book is through no means as wide as her title glance ats Cindy McCreery has now filled the gap with a real competent piece of work, based upon her Oxford doctoral thesis, supervised by the agency of Paul Langford.

Dr McCreery begins her investigation with Rowlandson's outrageous etching of the Duchess of Devonshire suckling a fox while ignoring her have hungry infant. This was single of the many prints attacking the Duchess's active support of Charles James Fox in the Westminster election of 1784 As the author argues, it was when women whether fine ladies or simple girls from the geographical division strayed from their expected parts that they laid themselves unclose to attack by the satirists. The author's initial work in this field was a application of mind of the Tete-a-tete heads in the scurrilous Town and land magazine; this magazine sold well, particularly in the provinces, upon the strength of small paired portraits of the latest adulterous or eloping brace to be talked about in London. greatest in quantity satires were, however, not in periodicals, of whose circulation and readership we can have an approximate idea, on the contrary were singly issued.

The initial chapter places the satirical print in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the London art market and raises the crucial question of in what manner widely the prints were known. The author cites the interesting article in the January 1992 issue of History through Eirwen Nicholson in which it is argued that the audience for singly issued satires was smaller than many historians now maintain. Here we have to draw a distinction, not solitary between satirical and humorous prints, which being les pendent on current affairs often had a longer life and wider circulation, on the other hand between the outputs of different publishers. Thus the line-engraved 'social' satires issued by dint of Matthew Darly, who for many years had a store with his wife, Mary (herself a printmaker), in the Strand, had a wide circulation. In contrast, as I have argued elsewhere, the business strategy of a publisher of that kind as William Holland was to exhibit a large number of different prints for sale in relatively small numbers. more [i]or[/i] less of these, such as English Slavery (1788) illustrated here, were true large and expensive, and consequently hardly known outside a clump of rich collectors. Reproduction of images in a work of today would appear to give them equal importance, however whereas Hogarth's prints were part of the general visual tillage of the day, others created by dint of less recognized talents, such as William nick (one of whose prints, The male carriage, 1787 is discussed here without his name being linked to the print), may have been seen by dint of only a handful of nation since they were created.

The author appropriate s separate chapters to the different situations in which transgression from the awaited norm was most likely to take place. After discussing representations of prostitutes, individual of the subjects most favoured through the satirists, the author direct the eyes at women on the stage, and then at those with artistic, literary or political pretensions. The final three chapters deal with 'Aristocratic Adulteresses and Patriotic Wives', 'Fashionable Mammas and Natural Mothers' and 'Old Maids, lively Widows, and Cosy Wives'. In the last chapter there is rightly plenteous discussion of the widespread attacks upon the society ladies who encouraged gambling, notably Mr Hobart and Lady Archer (who, not being the daughter of a duke or an earl, would have been greatest in quantity embarrassed to have been called 'Lady Sarah Archer', as she is occasionally referr to here). The feeling against these figures was not something whipped up through the print publishers and it is worth pointing on the outside that in May 1796 these women were threatened with the pillory through the judge Lord Kenyon.

Inevitably in dealing with similar large topics some of the discussions are far too abbreviated. For example, the disapproval of Mr Thrale's marriage to the Italian musician Gabriel Piozzi was also upon the grounds that she was neglecting her children, as well as the reasons that are given here. The little-known print entitled Signor Pi-z-i ravishing Mr Thrale, with its explicit suggestions that Piozzi's motives were mercenary and Thrale's lustful, which the author has fix in the Pierpont Morgan library, is single of a number of images which do not strike one as being to have been reproduced before. It is possible that it was not a regularly published print, since it appears to lack a publication line; upon the other hand it carries a signature, 'SC' or 'SCH'. The print is harmless enough as an image; it is the inscription that brings it to the cutting side of obscenity. One of the book's omissions is that in like manner little is said here about illicit prints, that is those which were either filthy or pornographic. These were intended for male organ of visions and the trade was strictly beneath the counter. Although the naughty prints produc through Rowlandson--his women have such charm that single hesitates to call them obscene--are famous, little is known about this aspect of the London print market, although a number of of the like kind English prints were reproduced a hundred ago in various books by dint of Edward Fuchs, none of which are mentioned in the author's comprehensive bibliography.