Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790-1822 focuses on the work produced collaboratively between 1816 and 1822 by the poet and radical journalist William Hone and the brilliant young graphic satirist George Cruikshank.
Dr Wood provides a much needed analytical framework for Regency radical satire uncovering a set of new sources and previously unknown cultural contexts for Hone and Cruikshank's work, which is shown to combine modernity and tradition in thrilling ways. Hone fused the literary and political inheritance of eighteenth-century satire with contemporary developments in advertising , popular publishing and mass marketing; Cruikshank combined the sophisticated conventions of the political print with the most up-to-date methods of advertizing, politics and propaganda.
Entertaining and original, this is an important contribution to the study of radical satire, which sheds new light on the relations between popular political authors and graphic artists and the major Romantic writers of the period.
Introduction - "The potatoes speak for themselves"; advertising, politics and parody 1710-1780' Eaton, Spence and modes of radical subversion in the Revolutionary Era; radicals and the law - blasphemous libels and the three trials of William Hone; radical puffing - parodic advertising and newspapers; "The Political House that Jack Built" - children's publishing and political satire; conclusion - satire, radicalism and radical Romanticism. Appendix: a transcription of the original manuscript version of "The Late John Wilkes's Catechism of a Ministerial Member".
