This book serves as a retrieval and reevaluation of a rich haul of comic caricatures from the turbulent years between the Reform Bill crisis of the early 1830s and the rise and fall of Chartism in the 1840s. With a telling selection of illustrations, this book deploys the techniques of close reading and political contextualization to demonstrate the aesthetic and ideological clout of a neglected tranche of satirical prints and periodicals dismissed as ineffectual by historians or distasteful by contemporaries. The prime exhibits are the work of Robert Seymour and C.J. Grant giving acerbic comic edge to the case for reform against class and state oppression and the excesses of the monarchical regime under the young Queen Victoria.

Ian Haywood is Professor of English at Roehampton University, UK, and Director of the Centre for Research in Romanticism. He is co-organiser of two international research networks: 'Romantic Illustration Network', and 'Anglo-Hispanic Horizons 1780-1840'. Previous works include Romanticism and Illustration, edited by Ian Haywood, Susan Matthews and Mary Shannon, and Spain in British Romanticism (Palgrave, 2018), edited by Diego Saglia and Ian Haywood. He was also President of the British Association of Romantic Studies (BARS) 2015-19.