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‘ “A Bird in the Hand is worth two in the Bush!” or, The Adventures of Jeremiah Oldpot’ was serialized in Yankee Notions (1852-1875), beginning in the very first issue in January 1852, and ran for eight installments until No. 12, December 1852. The artist is unknown.
The initials ‘V.P.’ can be seen under the first
panel of the first cartoon of the series, ‘Mr. Oldpot reads in the Herald of the
price of Tin in California,’ but these may have been the initials of the
engraving woodpecker rather than the artist.
Mr. Oldpot, of course owes much to ‘The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck,’ often called “the first American comic book”, which was first issued as a 40-page issue of Brother Jonathan Extra, in New York, on September 14, 1842. This extra issue was a reworked English version of Swiss cartoonist Rodolphe Töpffer’s ‘Histoire de M. Vieux Bois’ (1839).
Absolutely beautiful! Thanks for all these.
ReplyDeleteHi John, I haven't looked through all of Yankee Notions yet, but noticed that you apparently missed the 2nd Jeremiah Oldpot in No. 2 for February 1852. I downloaded it from the Google Books version, but it is not as high-res as yours above. Where did they come from?
ReplyDeleteHi John -- Darrell Coons here. Going through Yankee Notions Vol. 1 on Google Books, I noticed that is had a Jeremiah Oldpot episode every month. So there are 12 of them and two have two pages each. I haven't seen any other volumes to check whether any more were done.
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