Saturday, July 22, 2017

Pernicious Illustration – Pernicious Pictures

    
[1] From F. Opper’s Happy Hooligan, 1911

 PERNICIOUS ILLUSTRATION! 
xx 
“A worse pabulum for young America could hardly be concocted by Satan himself. The combined influences of the home, the public schools, and all the churches together are hardly sufficient to undo the mischief wrought in the minds of children by this never-ceasing flood of hell-broth.” — Henry Turner Bailey, 1911
xx 
 PERNICIOUS PICTURES
HENRY TURNER BAILEY in 1911 started a brief discussion with his 5-page article Pernicious Illustration in a brand new monthly trade magazine, The Graphic Arts (subtitle: ‘for Printers and Users of Printing’). Comments of two other authors followed in a later issue, under the general header “Pernicious Illustration” Again; The Other Side of the Matter. Below are the pages 121-125 and 284-288 with all three articles, taken from The Graphic Arts, Vol. I, January-June 1911, National Arts Publishing Company, Boston, MA. 
Pernicious Illustration by Henry Turner Bailey.

Another Aspect of Newspaper Humor by Brainard Leroy Bates.

A Plea for the Pernicious Pictures by Joseph Swerling. 

[2] Page 121
[3] Page 122
[4] Page 123
[5] Page 124
[6] Page 125
[7] Page 284
[8] Page 285
[9] Page 286
[10] Page 287
[11] Page 288
[12] F. Opper, Happy Hooligan Makes a Hit! But It Wasn’t on the Programme, a full page comic strip in the Sunday Chicago Tribune of February 26, 1911


Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Comics — And Their Creators: Frank King



IT’S AN ODD THING that everyone who reads the strip — about Walt and Skeezix — seems to know that Skeezix is a door-step baby but that many persons are confused about the parentage of Corky and Judy. Every week I get letters asking about the two younger children, usually from persons who say they want to settle a debt. Corky, you will recall, is the son of Walt and Phyllis, but Judy was left in the Wallet car and adopted by the Wallets. We changed the technique a little in her case, and instead of calling her a door-step baby she was called the “running board baby.” — ‘He’s the King of Gasoline Alley,’ in Chicago Tribune; said by Frank King, March 26, 1948
        
1933 [1] Literary Digest, Dec 16
1931 [2] Jan 11
1928 [3] June 1o
1927 [4] Chicago Tribune, Jan 23


Monday, July 10, 2017

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools

   

 Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools; Fact v Fiction, is a new book by Yesterday’s Papers contributor, Robert J. Kirkpatrick.

IN 1838, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens set out to expose the “scandal” of cheap Yorkshire boarding schools. Controversy over the accuracy and fairness of Dickens’s claims about these schools, as portrayed by Dotheboys Hall and its tyrannical master, Wackford Squeers, has raged ever since. Most attention has been focused on the supposed model for Dotheboys Hall, Bowes Academy in what was then the North Riding of Yorkshire, and its proprietor William Shaw. This has left many other aspects of the controversy under-explored. Dickens and his supporters, and many critics, made claims about the schools and the effect that Nicholas Nickleby had on them which can now be shown to have been wildly inaccurate.

This book sets out to explore these myths, to present a comprehensive history of the Yorkshire schools (in particular told through their advertisements), and to collect all the previously-published accounts of life at these schools — those that appeared before 1838 and those that appeared afterwards — bringing them all together for the first time. It is hoped that, by presenting all the evidence in one place, a full and balanced picture of the Yorkshire schools will help differentiate between the facts and the fiction.

Published by Mosaic (Teesdale) Ltd., Snaisgill, Middleton-in-Teesdale,
Co. Durham DL12 0RP 
Paperback, 380 pages.
Available HERE.