A01=Helen Pierce
Arthur Pond
Author_Helen Pierce
Bonnie Prince Charlie
broadsides
caricatura
Category=AB
Category=AGA
censorship
Charivari
Charles Mosley
Charles Williams
Daumier
Duke of Cumberland
Edward Browne
Edward Topham
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
Francis Barlow
Francis Grose
French Revolution
George Bickham
George Cruikshank
George Moutard Woodward
George Townshend
Georgian
Gordon Riots
graphic satire
Hannah Humphrey
Hogarth
humour
intaglio
Isaac Cruikshank
James Gillray
John Bull
John Doyle
John Dunstall
John Kay
John Leech
John Wilkes
Joseph Addison
Joseph Gulston
King George
lithography
Mary Darly
Mary Salmon
Matthew Darly
mezzotint
Napoleon
Peterloo
Phillipon
Piercy Roberts
Popish Plot
Prince Regent
prints
propaganda
Punch
Richard Cooper
Richard Doyle
Richard Newton
Richard Steele
Robert Peel
Robert Walpole
Samuel Fores
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Ward
sedition
Stephen College
The Spectator
Thomas Browne
Thomas Graves
Thomas Rowlandson
Tories
Wenceslaus Holler
Whigs
William Heath
woodblock
Product details
- ISBN 9781836392859
- Dimensions: 168 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The Profaned Pencil surveys the vivid and unruly world of British political caricature between 1600 and 1860. It follows the rise of graphic satire from polemical seventeenth-century broadsides to the exuberant prints of the Georgian era and the mass-market illustrated press of Victorian Britain. Caricature lay at the intersection of politics, art and the commercial print trade, with satirical images functioning as both entertainment and political commentary.
From attacks on monarchs and ministers to reflections on class, gender and war, caricature became a powerful and popular means of informing public debate. Illuminating the artists, technologies and markets that propelled its spread, Helen Pierce provides new insights into how caricature mediated authority, dissent and identity over two and a half transformative centuries.
Helen Pierce is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Aberdeen. She is the author of Unseemly Pictures: Graphic Satire and Politics in Early Modern England (2008).
