George Cruikshank A Revaluation [Paperback]

One of the most important British graphic artists of the nineteenth century, George Cruikshank (1792-1878) illustrated over 860 books, including several by Charles Dickens, and produced a vast number of etchings, paintings, and caricatures. The ten essays collected here first appeared in a special limited edition. In a new preface written for this paperback edition, Robert Patten shows how the insights of these seminal essays have been amplified by recent exhibitions and scholarship. The introduction by John Fowles has been retained and an index has been added. In addition to the many Cruikshank illustrations reproduced in the volume, there are original drawings by contemporary artists David Levine and Ronald Searle.

Robert L. Patten, Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Rice University, is the author ofCharles Dickens and His Publishers(Oxford) and a two-volume biography,George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art(Rutgers). [Cruikshank's] artistic roles and productiveness comprise a bewildering spectrum of style and subject that has hitherto defied critical summary. . . . Professor Patten has collected essays that are acute, diverse, and stimulating in judgment, and which will surely spur on the continuing revaluation of Cruikshank that he hopes for. ---Jonathan E. Hill,Victorian Studies