Temperance movement satirically characterizing alcoholism prints The Bottle c.1850

$950

Out of stock

 

VERY rare to find complete set of eight

sold as a set

please note all photos

some prints are discolored

  This 8-page cautionary cartoon was originally created in England in 1847 by George Cruikshank, the popular caricaturist (who five years later drew some of the best known illustrations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for an English reprinting of Stowe’s novel). Prints were not protected by copyright until 1865, however, and Cruikshank is not credited anywhere in these American-made drawings, or in the temperance text in which they were published as a kind of frontispiece. There they appear as the work of a Philadelphia artist who signs himself simply “Pilliner.” In one drawing the words “Engraved by” are added to the name, but comparing these images to Cruikshank’s makes it clear that Pilliner also redrew them, in a simpler, cruder style than Cruikshank’s. T.S. Arthur, author of the stories in the volume in which the drawings appear, was already well known as a temperance writer though not yet famous as the author of the 19th century’s most frequently produced temperance drama Ten Nights in a Bar-Room.
From Temperance Tales; or, Six Nights with the Washingtonians
By T[imothy] S[hay] Arthur
(Philadelphia: W. A. Leary & Co.)