David
Kunzle. Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Hardcover:
ISBN:
978-1-4968-3399-0, 472 pp., 309 b&w & 12 color illustrations. US
$90. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/R/Rebirth-of-the-English-Comic-Strip
A Review Essay
by
Richard Scully
Reviewing another book
for another journal, Michael Connerty (2021) observed that “This is a good time
to be alive for anybody interested in the development of cartooning and comic
strip art during the nineteenth century.” Among the reasons why, he mentioned
the hugely-significant recent study of Marie Duval by Simon Grennan, Roger
Sabin, and Julian Waite (2020), and my own Eminent Victorian Cartoonists
(2018). To that list we should also add Ian Haywood’s The Rise of Victorian
Caricature (2020), and Brian Maidment’s Robert Seymour and
Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (2021), but of the original three works
Connerty mentioned, the one that probably represents an epoch in the field is
the latest--and possibly final--offering by the “foundational scholar” of early
comics history: David Kunzle.
With The
Rebirth of the English Comic Strip, Kunzle returns to explore the British
contexts first touched upon more than a generation ago in The Early Comic
Strip (1973) and then in The History of the Comic Strip, Vol. II: The Nineteenth Century (1990). At the
time, it was the German and Francophone comic artists whose work was given
pride of place in the grand narrative of c. 1450-1825 and beyond, to the 1890s.
Only two of the chapters of The Nineteenth Century related to “England”--just
36-odd pages out of the total of 300--and in Rebirth, Kunzle expresses
regret that “space restriction inhibited closer look at the English
contribution,” especially given “the riches of Britain’s contribution to the
comic strip” (x).
This richness is
now given its due, with nearly all the main subjects first explored in 1990--and
additional topics discovered in the intervening decades--examined with
customary thoroughness and incisiveness; and all in the unmistakable prose
style that has led so many of us to follow Kunzle into the serious study of
comics. David Kunzle has always written inclusively. Second-person pronouns
abound, as “we” are taken along for a remarkable peek into the archives. The
story told in Rebirth is not merely his hobby horse, but “our
exploration” (398). The language is not preserved in the amber-like fixity of
the formal “academese” past tense--it is living and present. It is often funny.
It is emotive. From the very beginning to the charming and beautiful postscript
at the very end (437). Kunzle is also a master of dropping in and out of
different modes, such as a divergence into Victorian theatricality in the
Prologue (xv-xvi), the “Once upon a time” (xi), or the excurses that appear in
several chapters (50-52; 97; 112-113; 200; 410-412). This is to say nothing of
the way Kunzle--and the publishers--allows the comic art to speak for itself
for page after page (a fortunate byproduct of intellectual property law, and
the presence of such work in the public domain, rather than in corporate hands).
Divided into
chapters focused on particular artists (e.g. Chapter 1 on George Cruikshank) or
publications (e.g. Chapter 2 on The Man in the Moon, 1847-1849), the
approach is chronological, and covers what W. L. Burn called The Age of
Equipoise (1964). This was the period of relative calm that characterized
“the Mid-Victorian generation” between the ending of the “hungry ‘40s” amidst
the upheavals of Chartism and the Continent-wide revolutions of 1848, and the
Gladstonian ascendancy, Beaconsfieldism, and the “New Imperialism” of the 1880s
and 1890s. While Burn concentrated on 1852 to 1867, Kunzle’s span of time is a
little longer: between the “sudden
erupt[ion] of “comic strip fireworks” in 1847 (ix), and the “bizarre new
stylistic era” beginning around 1870. Context is king from the outset of the
book, and the cultural status of the Victorian magazine (arbitrated by Carlyle
and Dickens), and the “sociopolitical history” of a period not well-known for
its comic strips, is presented in fine form. The contrast between Britain (or
England, as Kunzle has it) and France; the working lives of comic artists; the
sources for comic comment; and--in a deliberate glance back to 1990 and The
Nineteenth Century--the crucial importance of a society shaped by the
railways and by the theatre, all make for an ideal Prologue.
The prehistory of
the English comic strip is the focus for the Introduction, with Hogarth the
logical starting point. Kunzle sees the narrative, though, as a disconnected
one. From Hogarth to the “Great Age of Caricature” there is continuity, but
huge changes in the “printing and publishing industries, cultural attitudes
(such as the ‘Victorian’ rejection of Regency libertinism), and caricature
itself” separated Kunzle’s period of Rebirth from what had gone before.
This is actually rather an older way of viewing the periodization, and the
evolution of British comic art; something challenged by Brian Maidment and
others (including myself). But here is nonetheless an engaging narrative
encompassing Rodolphe Töpffer--whose reputation Kunzle has done much to reinforce
in two key volumes (2007a and 2007b)--and a potential, crucial transnational
transfer from his Swiss homeland to England via John Ruskin and George Eliot
(3-4). Rounding out the chapter is a somewhat disconnected study of Robert
Seymour, who--Kunzle argues--“deserves to be remembered for more than his
illustrations to Pickwick, his pre-Punch satirical Figaro in London
(1831-1838), or his tragic suicide at the age of thirty-eight” (8). It’s a
little surprising that Kunzle shows some ignorance of Brian Maidment’s (2013a)
early work on Seymour, which went a long way towards remedying such a myopia,
and has culminated with the first full-length study just this year (2021).
Where Kunzle is on
firmer ground is in his shedding new light on the otherwise well-known and
high-profile artists of the Victorian Age. In the first of the substantive
chapters, Kunzle focuses on George Cruikshank (of the famous dynasty of
caricaturists), and explores his work in the temperance and teetotal social
movement in depth. Following Robert Patten’s immense, two-volume biography of
Cruikshank (1992; 1996)--itself almost a conscious imitation of the classic
Victorian form of the genre--it’s hard to imagine how anything new could be
said about this Janus-faced figure. But Kunzle draws-in likely influences from
Töpffer and re-interprets much of Cruikshank’s work; and The Toothache
is dealt with in ways not hitherto appreciated as well.
Albert Smith’s
brief, but significant, Man in the Moon (1847-1849) takes up Chapter 2,
and Kunzle successfully rescues that publication from more than a century of
condescension by Punch scholars. Since his departure from Punch,
the judgement of his one-time peers, Douglas Jerrold and Mark Lemon, has been
that Smith was “vulgar and bumptious” (43) and that his own paper was little
more than a foil to the senior paper. Kunzle sees much more merit in its pages
than the admittedly quite deliberate swipes at Punch. For starters,
there was Cham’s (Amédée de Noé) contribution (45-47), and the work of Henry Hine
and the character Mr. Crindle. Nevertheless, Man in the Moon did deflate
(just as assuredly as did Smith’s own hot-air balloon in 1847), and Kunzle does
a good job of accounting for that (as well as providing a nice summation of
Europe’s revolutionary atmosphere around the time of its demise).
Beginning with
Chapter 3, Kunzle embarks on a truly fascinating series of studies of Punch
that truly breaks new ground. So, while the existing literature on Punch
is vast (and is still growing), it is surprising that neither Richard D. Altick
(1997), nor Frankie Morris (2005), Patrick Leary (2010) or Brian Maidment (2013b),
have picked-up on this crucial role as not merely an inspiration for comic
strip magazines, but also the very practice. This is the London Charivari
as a comic, and its chief cartoonists--Richard Doyle, John Leech, John
Tenniel, Charles Keene, and George Du Maurier--as comic strip artists.
Interspersed with
the Punch exploration are additional chapters on the fascinating
political Francophobia/cultural Francophilia of two short comics regarding King
Louis Philippe; and on Thomas Onwhyn’s shilling booklet Mr. and Mrs. John
Brown’s Visit to London to See the Grand Exposition (1851). The impression
given is precisely what Kunzle intends for these middle chapters: to restore the mid-Victorian period as one of
the key historical phases of comic strip art, in which multiple, regular, comic
publications appeared to cater for various tastes. The status of the comic
strip was enhanced by its association with Punch, at the moment it
became a fixture of the establishment. So too it was adapted for other
periodicals, such as Town Talk (the subject of Chapter 12) and the Illustrated
London News (Chapter 13), as well as other journals, before disappearing
after 1870.
But before the
Epilogue deals with the sudden fading of the Victorian comic strip (compromised
by a new perception that it was “vulgar”), the final substantive chapter (14),
picks up on themes that have been of particular interest to the most recent
Victorian-age comics scholarship: the
hitherto-neglected career of Marie Duval at Judy, and perspectives from
the sesquicentenary of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). For the former, the
aforementioned work of Grennan, Sabin, and Waite may be of unsurpassed quality,
but it was built on the foundation established by Kunzle himself, who basically
discovered Duval back in the 1980s. For the latter, Kunzle was name-checked by
a number of scholars attending the May 2021 conference Chroniquer
la guerre La Guerre de 1870-1871 dans la presse européenne et atlantique
(held online because of COVID, via the École Polytechnique, Université Sorbonne
Nouvelle, and Musée de l’Armée). And like the rest of Rebirth, this
chapter is not an exercise in resting on one’s laurels, but a further
advancement in the interpretation of both comic touchstones. In part, this is
due to the acid Kunzle wit: Bismarck’s
Ems telegram is likened to Trumpian “fake news” (403), and the link between the
correspondents of 1870 with those in Baghdad or Kabul in more recent years.
There does seem to be one slip-up (probably editorial, post-proofing) in
misidentifying Judy’s “big cut” artist as William Brunton, not William
Boucher (404); but that does not prevent Kunzle from joining a recent push to
highlight Boucher’s remarkable body of work (Scully, 2013; Scully, 2018; Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, 2020; Gangnes, 2020).
It is rather
striking that the book can be so original despite relying almost entirely on
published primary sources. The Punch archives held by the British
Library were not consulted for the light they shed on matters such as income,
editorial decision-making, and the like, meaning there is still work to be done
in this area. Although the expenses of geography and time can account for this
omission, the absence of the editors’ copy of Fun, held at the
Huntington Library, close to Kunzle’s base of operations, is a little less
forgivable. Still, one can really only quibble about the details, as they are
not crucial to the overall argument. For instance, from the 1860s, major Punch
artists were not paid “£10-20 per major drawing” (xiii), but rather received a
salary--Tenniel’s was £853.5s per year in 1875 (Scully, 2018b: 147). True, at Fun,
John Gordon Thomson was paid by the drawing, but this was only ever in the
realm of £4-6 for a “large cut” cartoon in the 1870s and 1880s (Scully, 2018b:
146). One of Kunzle’s key case-studies--George Du Maurier--spent an inordinate
amount of time worrying over the relative incomes of his senior colleagues as
early as 1861: John Leech reportedly
earning £1000 a year, and Tenniel £500 (Scully, 2018a: 107).
There are also a
few notable omissions from the secondary sources, too. I, for one, would have
enjoyed seeing Kunzle weigh-in to the obvious debate with Belgian historian
Thierry Smolderen on The Origins of Comics (2014; published in the same
Mississippi series). Although complementary, their interpretations differ, but
there seems to be very little historiographical engagement with this, more
broadly. James Chapman’s complete history of British Comics (2011) also
doesn’t merit a mention--but then, Chapman didn’t seem terribly aware of
Kunzle’s volumes, either, and just one of his articles on Ally Sloper (261, n14).
Indeed, the literature review does not seem itself to be a favored means of
contextualizing much comics scholarship. Absent from Kunzle’s Bibliography are
also works by Brian Maidment (see above) and Henry Miller (2009a & b), as
well as Richard D. Altick’s 1997 study of the early Punch, and (it has
to be said) some of my own recent stuff on cartoonists; all of which would
provide important context, if not being of direct relevance to the comic strip
itself. That the scholarly literature is still somewhat disjointed and
disconnected is underscored by Kunzle’s own observation (444, n6) that his work
on Marie Duval--amounting to three articles (1985; 1986a; 1986b) and copious
references in The Nineteenth Century (1990)--was largely ignored by the
late Denis Gifford in writing an entry on the “Ally Sloper group” for the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (2004). This is something that Kunzle--perhaps
in partnership with Grennan, Sabin, and Waite--should address.
One does also
wonder why Kunzle did not revisit aspects of his earlier work that would have
benefited from a second opinion, modified by the passage of time. Looking back to
1990, and The Nineteenth Century, one is struck by the absence in Rebirth
of a chapter updating Kunzle’s work on James Sullivan, Fun, and “The
British Working Man” (spanning pages 324-329 of the earlier volume). The
Huntington Library copy of Fun would provide some very interesting new
material for such a study; as would the only substantial work to have been
based on that primary source: E. S.
Lauterbach’s doctoral thesis (completed at Urbana, Illinois in 1961). But, as
Kunzle notes himself, one can only do so much, and there is not always much
point in revisiting the past when trying to drive forward.
Speaking of the
past, though; for someone like me, I’m most cheered by the fact that Kunzle has
always--unashamedly--written history (as opposed to critique,
commentary, or other, jargonistic or theory-heavy analytical forms from the
literary or cultural studies world). Without the scholarly weight of his works
to point to, I’d probably have been laughed-out of one too many seminars--and
possibly a job--long ago. As an art historian, however, Kunzle is
permitted to be more critical when it comes to the aesthetic merits of his
subject-matter than the “straight” historian. And this is evident as he closes
his volume with a riposte to the Punch tradition of comic art:
Punch’s reputation had declined [by the 1890s], having
become tired and repetitive… [It] persisted through to the end of the century
and beyond, in the endless, dreary perambulation of academically drawn illustrated
jokes, with captions featuring the witty and the witless, the fatuous
infelicity and the verbal faux pas [433].
Reputations are
difficult things to track, historically. And Kunzle doesn’t offer any evidence
for this perceived decline, which is important, given this was a time when the
circulation figures were exceeding 80-90,000 per week (Scully, 2018, I: 18),
and its status had been cemented by The History of “Punch” (1895) from
M. H. Spielmann (a great arbiter of taste). Certainly, its fin de siècle
content is unattractive to the radical sensibility, and Kunzle joins Sir David
Low in criticizing it for staidness (Scully, 2018, I: 15). But Punch was
hugely popular in its time and of its class; and any diminution of its quality
is a subjective, anachronistic one, from the perspective of the 21st
Century and the focus on the comic strip.
But Kunzle’s
opinion of Punch in part a lament, rather than outright criticism, for
in eschewing the comic strip, the London Charivari left that medium to
its lower-class rivals--although Kunzle dismisses the notion of any true
rivalry (434). Between 1870 and the Edwardian period, Will o’ the Wisp, Judy,
Fun, Pick-Me-Up, Funny Folks, Scraps, Illustrated
Bits, and Comic Cuts witnessed the “vulgarization” of the comic
periodical, and in cheapening the fare to be had by British readers, “it would
take generations before the comic strip and comic books could rise from the
reputational miasma of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century” (435).
A harsh assessment indeed, especially given Judy probably entered a
definite, post-Sloperian “Golden Age” in the 1890s (Scully, 2018, II: 83-84). Fun
did decline in the later 1890s, and expired in 1901; Funny Folks folded
in 1894. But Pick-Me-Up was a glossy and glorious product of the “Naughty
Nineties,” despite its obvious piracy from Continental counterparts; hardly of
a kind with the cheap-and-nasty Scraps, Illustrated Bits, and Comic
Cuts (something evident from their very names). If one steps-back and
applies a less aesthetic set of judgments, then what Kunzle identifies here is
precisely what he spotted occurring in the 1830s (1983): the material change of medium that accompanies
a seismic shift in the history of the cartoon and comic. The “graphic
bric-a-brac”--in his own, memorable phrasing (Kunzle, 1990: 20)--of the late Regency/early Victorian period finds its
counterpart in these comics, which were experimental publishing forms,
deserving of less judgmental assessment, and appreciation for what they were,
not the later standards they failed to attain.
There is thus an
opportunity here to challenge Kunzle’s assessment of the late-Victorian/Edwardian
comic paper, just as Brian Maidment (2018: 54) and others have done for his
assessment of the beginning of that period. Aspiring scholars should probably
get their skates on, though. As Kunzle points out, the very cheapness of the
Harmsworth/Northcliffe Comic Cuts presents a major problem for the
historian of a century later:
in consulting Comic Cuts of this period… I found the danger not
so much the bleeding through of the ink onto the reverse side (as shown on p.
369), not so much the occasional indecipherability, but the acidic
disintegration of whole pages, as I turned them into a shower of confetti
(435).
A timely reminder in our digital age of the need to
preserve the archive, but also to consult the material culture, not merely its
facsimile.
In an earlier age,
in 1973 and 1990, comics studies was of fringe interest; edgy; even subversive.
And Kunzle’s radical credentials were reinforced by his choice of
subject-matter. For years we have been weaning ourselves off the need to bemoan
the “neglectedness” of our field, because today, it is no longer the poor
cousin in the Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, nor even a
minor area of study. It is probably the fastest-growing field in the
Humanities, if not quite yet a nascent discipline of its own.1 Rebirth
is not a standalone curiosity, but a handsomely-produced, well-edited,
contribution to Mississippi’s Comics Studies series--some 162 volumes to date--which
is itself just one of a number of series devoted to the field (including those
of Palgrave, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Ohio State, Nebraska, and more). Kunzle’s
work across six decades is one of the key reasons for the all-conquering
strength of the field and, appropriately, Rebirth brings us not only full
circle, but opens up new vistas for the future.
References
Altick, Richard D. 1997. Punch: the Lively Youth of a British Institution,
1841-1851. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press.
Burn, W. L. 1964. The Age of Equipoise: A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation.
London: George Allen & Unwin.
Chapman, James. 2011. British Comics: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion.
Connerty, Michael. 2021. “Book Review: Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, by Simon
Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Manchester University Press, 2020, 272
pp.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Published online May 11,
2021.
Connerty, Michael. 2021. The Comic Strip Art of
Jack B. Yeats. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave.
Gangnes, Madeline B. 2020. “Material Romance: Kidnapped In and Out of Young Folks
Paper.” Victorian Periodicals Review 53 (2): 183-213.
Gifford, Denis. 2004. “Ally Sloper Group (act.
1867-1923).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66301>. Accessed Nov. 15,
2021.
Grennan, Simon, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite. 2020. Marie
Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Haywood, Ian. 2020. The Rise of Victorian
Caricature. Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Kunzle, David. 1973. The Early Comic Strip: Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the
European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.
Kunzle, David. 1983. “Between Broadsheet Caricature
and Punch: Cheap Newspaper Cuts
for the Lower Classes in the 1830s.” Art Journal 4 (43): 339-346.
Kunzle, David. 1985. “The First Ally Sloper: The Earliest Popular Cartoon Character as a
Satire on the Victorian Work Ethic.” Oxford Art Journal 8 (1): 40–48.
Kunzle, David. 1986a. “Marie Duval and Ally Sloper.” History
Workshop Journal 21 (1): 133-140.
Kunzle, David. 1986b. “Marie Duval--Caricaturist
Rediscovered.” Woman’s Art Journal 7 (1): 26-31.
Kunzle, David. 1990.
The History of the Comic Strip, Vol. II: The Nineteenth Century. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Kunzle, David. 2007a. ed. Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Kunzle, David. 2007b. Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer. Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi.
Leary, Patrick, The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian
London. London: The British Library.
Maidment, Brian. 2013a. “The Presence of Punch
in the Nineteenth Century.” In Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair, edited by Hans
Harder and Barbara Mittler, pp.15-44. New York & Heidelberg.
Maidment, Brian. 2013b. Comedy, Caricature and the
Social Order, 1820-50. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Maidment, Brian. 2018. “Caricature and the Comic Image
in the 1830s.” The Yearbook of English Studies 48: Writing in the Age of William IV, pp. 54-81.
Maidment, Brian. 2021. Robert Seymour and
Nineteenth-Century Print Culture--Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration.
London: Routledge.
Miller, Henry J. 2009a. “John Leech and the Shaping of
the Victorian Cartoon: The Context of
Respectability.” Victorian Periodicals Review 42 (3): 267-291.
Miller, Henry. 2009b. “The Problem with Punch.”
Historical Research 82 (216): 285-302.
Morris, Frankie. 2005. Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and
Illustrations of Tenniel. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Patten, Robert L. 1992. George Cruikshank's Life,
Times, and Art--Volume 1: 1792-1835.
Cambridge: Lutterworth.
Patten, Robert L. 1996. George Cruikshank's Life,
Times, and Art--Volume 2: 1835-1878. Cambridge: Lutterworth.
Scully, Richard. 2013. “William Henry Boucher (1837-1906): Illustrator and Judy Cartoonist.” Victorian
Periodicals Review 46 (4): 441-474.
Scully, Richard. 2018. Eminent Victorian
Cartoonists. 3 volumes. London: The
Political Cartoon Society.
Smolderen, Thierry. 2014. The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay. Bart
Beaty and Nick Nguyen (trans.). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Spielmann, M. H. 1895. The History of “Punch.”
London: Cassell & Co.
_________________________
1 My
appraisal of the evolution of the field is paraphrased (if not plagiarised,
unashamedly!) from Roger Sabin’s joyful editors’ preface to Palgrave’s “Studies
in Comics and Graphic Novels” series.
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