George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was England’s most prolific caricaturist and illustrator, creating some 10,000 sketches over more than sixty years of productivity. His etchings and engravings appeared in pamphlets and placards, bound books and broadsides, periodicals and prints.
Bent over a copperplate, Cruikshank’s imagination and burin ran wild. His politics also ran the gamut on the page, trafficking in subversive satire and in the worst stereotypes of the age. Controversial, charismatic, tireless and talented, Cruikshank was central to the flourishing of visual culture in nineteenth-century British media.
Curated by students in the Department of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) this online exhibition features a wide sampling of Cruikshank’s work held in the UMBC Special Collections Library.