Abstract
This chapter introduces the book’s central focus, the cartoonist and painter Jack B. Yeats, a major figure in twentieth-century Irish art, and argues for a reassessment of his career that acknowledges his substantial contribution to British comics between c. 1892 and 1917. The introductory chapter also offers a review of the literature relating to the history of cartooning and comics during the Victorian period, as well as to related areas within contemporaneous media and entertainment culture. It presents an outline of the subsequent chapters in the book, which include a history of British comics during the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, providing context for chapters that focus on specific areas of Jack Yeats’ comic strip oeuvre, such as the influence of crime and adventure fiction, and of popular spectacle, on his work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Sarah Slater, “Jack Butler Yeats painting makes €1.7m in ‘white glove sale’” Irish Independent, 28 November 2019.
- 2.
Throughout the book I will be referring to ‘British’ comics (as opposed to, say, ‘English’ comics). One reason for this is to indicate the geographical boundaries within which the publications were distributed and consumed. Another is to present the earlier comics as belonging to the graphic tradition that would later include examples such as The Beano and The Dandy (both published in Scotland). It should be noted that prior to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, ‘British’ could be understood to mean ‘of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.’
- 3.
David Kunzle, The History of the Comic Strip Vol. 1: Picture Stories and Narrative Strips in the European Broadsheet, ca. 1450–1826 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); and The History of the Comic Strip Vol. 2: The Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
- 4.
At the time of writing, a new work by Kunzle has been announced (David Kunzle, Rebirth of the English Comic Strip, A Kaleidoscope 1847–70, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2021). I regret that the present work will therefore not be informed by what will be, one suspects, an insightful and thorough rethinking of that period.
- 5.
Thierry Smolderen, The Origin of the Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay, translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2014).
- 6.
Charles Dierick and Pascal Lefèvre eds. Forging a New Medium: The Comic Strip in the Nineteenth Century (Brussels: VUB University Press, 1998).
- 7.
Richard Scully, Eminent Victorian Cartoonists Vols 1–3, (London: The Political Cartoon Society, 2018).
- 8.
Brian Maidment, Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 1820–50 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013).
- 9.
Patrick Leary, The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London, London: British Library, 2010.
- 10.
R.G.G. Price, A History of Punch. London: Collins, 1957.
- 11.
Richard Scully, “A Comic Empire: The Global Expansion of Punch as a Model Publication, 1841–1936”, International Journal of Comic Art 15 No. 2 (2013):8; see also Brian Maidment, “The Presence of Punch in the Nineteenth Century,” in Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler eds. Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair (Heidelberg: Springer, 2013).
- 12.
James Curry and Ciarán Wallace, Thomas Fitzpatrick and the Leprechaun Cartoon Monthly (Dublin: Dublin City Council, 2015).
- 13.
Denis Gifford, Victorian Comics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976); Denis Gifford, The British Comic Catalogue (Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975).
- 14.
Roger Sabin, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (London: Phaidon. 1996); and Adult Comics: an Introduction (London: Routledge, 1993).
- 15.
Roger Sabin, “Ally Sloper: the First Comics Superstar?” in A Comics Studies Reader, ed. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press), 177–189; Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Marie Duval, Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020); and Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Marie Duval (Oxford: Myriad Editions, 2018).
- 16.
Roger Sabin, “Comics versus books: the new criticism at the ‘fin de siècle’.” In Transforming Anthony Trollope: Dispossession, Victorianism and Nineteenth Century Word and Image edited by Simon Grennan and Lawrence Grove, 107–129. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2015.
- 17.
Paul Gravett, “The Cartoonist’s Progress: The Inventors of Comics in Great Britain.” In Forging a New Medium: The Comic Strip in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Charles Dierick and Pascal Lefèvre, (Brussels: VUB University Press, 1998) 79–103; and Kevin Carpenter, Penny Dreadfuls and Comics: English Periodicals for Children from Victorian Times to the Present Day (London: V&A Publishing, 1983). See also: James Chapman, British Comics: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion, 2011; and Michael Demson and Heather Brown, “Ain’t I de Maine Guy in Dis Parade?”: towards a radical history of comic strips and their audience since Peterloo” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 2 No. 2 (2011): 151–167.
- 18.
“Wonderfully Vulgar: British Comics 1873–1939” accessed at wonderfullyvulgar.de on 23 July 2020.
- 19.
John Harding, Dreaming of Babylon: The Life and Times of Ralph Hodgson (London: Greenwich Exchange, 2008).
- 20.
Paul Ferris, The House of Northcliffe: The Harmsworths of Fleet Street (London: Garden City Press, 1971). See also: Howard Cox and Simon Mowatt, Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- 21.
Ian Gordon, Comic Strips and Consumer Culture (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1998).
- 22.
Christina Meyer, Producing Mass Entertainment: The Serial Life of the Yellow Kid (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019).
- 23.
David Reed, The Popular Magazine in Britain and the United States 1880–1960 (London: The British Library, 1997); Martin Conboy, The Press and Popular Culture (London: SAGE Publications, 2001); and Robert J. Kirkpatrick, From the Penny Dreadful to the Ha’penny Dreadfuller: A Bibliographic History of the Boys’ periodical in Britain 1762–1930 (London: The British Library, 2013).
- 24.
David Reed, op. cit. 99.
- 25.
Bailey, Peter, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; Andrew Horrall, Popular Culture in London c. 1890–1918: The Transformation of Entertainment. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
- 26.
For example, on the circus: Gillian Arrighi, The circus and modernity: a commitment to the ‘newer’ and the ‘newest’ Early Popular Visual Culture 10 no. 2 (2012): 169–185; Peta Tait, Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance (London: Routledge, 2005); on music hall: Dagmar Kift, The Victorian Music Hall: Culture, Class and Conflict. Translated by Roy Kift (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Barry J. Faulk, Music hall and modernity: The Late-Victorian Discovery of Popular Culture (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004).
- 27.
Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Biography (London: Routledge, 1970); Bruce Arnold, Jack Yeats (New haven, CT: Yale University Press: 1998).
- 28.
For example, see Arnold, 1998, op. cit. 58–59; Pyle, 1970, op. cit. 36–37.
- 29.
Pyle, 1970, op. cit. 40.
- 30.
Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1994).
- 31.
Pyle, 1993, op. cit. 94.
- 32.
Róisín Kennedy, “Divorcing Jack … from Irish Politics”; Angela Griffith, “Impressions: Jack Yeats’ Approach to Fine Art Publishing,” both in Yvonne Scott ed. Jack B. Yeats: Old and New Departures (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008).
- 33.
I am also grateful to Dr Marcus Free for sharing with me his collection of comics from this period, many of which are, again, in their original form as individual issues.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Connerty, M. (2021). Introduction. In: The Comic Strip Art of Jack B. Yeats. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76893-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76893-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-76892-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-76893-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)