George Biggs’s Family Herald

Family Herald, May 5, 1860

‘…the great thing is to serve up hot. My immortal tale referred to above opened with a wedding ceremony, which was interrupted at the critical moment by an eclipse (“My readers will remember the terrible eclipse of 18–,” &c.) When the darkness had passed, the bride had disappeared!’

‘The Manufacture of Penny Numbers – by a Manufacturer,’ in Pall Mall Gazette, August 9, 1884 (attributed to Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie)

PREFACING his collected numbers of Pickwick Charles Dickens said of serial writing, “that, while the different incidents were linked together by a chain of interest strong enough to prevent their appearing unconnected or impossible, the general design should be so simple as to sustain no injury from his detached and desultory form of publication, extending over no fewer than twenty months.” Adding “every number should be, to a certain extent, complete in itself.”

A WRITER on ‘Social Economy’ in 1862 in The British Controversialist listed the “products of the infidel press,” these “periodicals of a positively pernicious character” as

…such serials as The London Journal, Family Herald, Reynolds’s Miscellany, The Welcome Guest, The Guide, The Home Magazine, The Halfpenny Gazette, and the Halfpenny Journal. The Family Herald, The London Journal, and Reynolds’s Miscellany, are the elder members of this fraternity; and the numbers reported to be sold of them appears almost fabulous; but there are many facts which prove their immense success and popularity. Take the following by way of example. In the newspaper notices of the somewhat recent death of Mr. James Biggs, the projector and proprietor of the Family Herald, it was stated that he had realized a very handsome fortune by that periodical, which in his hands attained a circulation of 260,000 copies weekly!

OLDEST of the ‘serials’ — subtitled: ‘A Domestic Magazine of Useful Information and Amusement’ — the Family Herald was first published from 421, Strand, London, on May 13, 1843. Mr. George Biggs (not James) was the proprietor. The Rev. James Elishama “Shepherd” Smith (1801-1857), a contributor to Benjamin Cousins's Penny Satirist, was the first editor. When George Biggs died on May 22, 1859, the Family Herald was continued under proprietor William Stevens, one of the founders of the Reader. The Family Herald lasted until 1940. Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant reviewed sixpence worth of the popular penny periodicals of 1858. She wrote of the Family Herald

The Family Herald is blandly narrative and storytelling, with a mixture of the fine, the thrilling, and, for a wonder, the domestic.

Publisher’s Circular, 1844

 

GEORGE BIGGS began as a compositor for the printer Galignani, and it was there, according to the Literary Gazette, he saved the money to publish the Family Herald — “a species of publication quite new to the public when Mr. Biggs venture first saw the light.” In 1843 “all the capital required was sufficient capital to pay for printing and paper. It must be said of the Family Herald that it is the purest reading of all purely amusing penny literature; it is, indeed, a family paper.” The Family Herald had no illustrations and, other than the occasional initials, the writers remained anonymous. ‘Weekly Romance,’ an article in the Saturday Review, May 8, 1856, described the serial paper as a weekly giving

…at the small cost of a penny, column on column of spirited romance. The stories are not indeed specimens of very high art, and it is difficult to mistake the class for whom they are especially written. They are obviously meant to find their way into the kitchen; and if mistresses want to know what are the evening studies of their cooks and housemaids, they have only to devote a few minutes to turning over the fascinating pages in question.

WITHOUT heirs or next of kin, George Biggs died leaving an estate of £70,000, a fortune in the 1850s. One of his executors was Benjamin Davy Cousins of Helmet-court, Strand, printer of the Family Herald, who was also left £7000 in Biggs’s will. Biggs left over 150 bequests; among them were assistants, printers, contributors to the Family Herald, and his “predecessor” Mr. Leigh. Many an aged printer or printer’s widow had Biggs’s Printer’s Almshouse Society to thank for pensions of £10 per annum, payable half-yearly.  

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The FAMILY HERALD, Vol. 18 (1860-61) can be read HERE.

American Cornball; A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny

CHEERED ON by an anvil chorus of quotable comic writers like H.L. Mencken, Mort Walker, and James Joyce, writer Christopher Miller digs up the bones of America’s humoristic past with an autopsy of the obscure, forgotten, and unimportant clichés, tropes, memes, and comic stereotypes of American popular culture. With a cast of thousands, real and imaginary, reading this illustrated volume in one gulp can have a discombobulating effect on the brain. 

THERE ARE ninety-five entries in his new book American Cornball; A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, covering the first two thirds of the 20th century with examples taken from comic strips, animated cartoons, radio, films, comedy shorts, postcards, Tijuana Bibles and cocktail napkin ephemera. The jokes, as the “formerly funny” in the title suggests, may not be all that funny to the modern reader, but with humorist Christopher Miller investigating we get an obsessively detailed and amusing examination of the nuts, bolts and brickbats of vintage stereotypical humor.

BROOKLYN based Miller’s previous novel Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects was the Seattle Times Book of the Year; and his novel The Cardboard Universe was Huffington Post’s Best Book of the Year. American Cornball; A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny (Harper-Collins) will be available March 2014 from good booksellers everywhere.

FOR A PREVIEW of the type of humor found in American Cornball check out Christopher Miller’s illustrated Facebook page HERE.

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The Germ of the Detective Novel

Gaboriau’s The Widow Lerouge, illustrated by Louise L. Heustis, 1900.

   
A SHORT ESSAY — ‘The Germ of the Detective Novel’ by Henry Llewellyn Williams — published in The Book Buyer, Vol. XXI, August 1900 to January 1901, pp. 268-274. French writer Émile Gaboriau (1832-73) died when he was forty.
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• p.268 •

• p.269 •

• p.270 •

• p.271 •

• p.272 •

• p.273 •

• p.274 •

For more on Henry Llewellyn Williams, see HERE.
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Palmer Cox, The Brownie Man

“I keep my pictures true to life, with the exception of the Brownies. Most of the places the Brownies describe I have visited and the pictures were either drawn from my own observations or made from photographic originals.” — ‘Palmer Cox, Brownie Man, at 77 Hard at Work in East Quogue,’ Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 16, 1917

by John Adcock

PALMER COX won worldwide fame so it’s a shame that Canada, the land of his birth (he also had American citizenship) should treat his memory so shabbily, as Montreal author Brian Busby notes in a recent blog-post — see A Dusty Bookcase. Cox was one of the most famous and recognizable cartoonists of the nineteenth century. Ironically the idol of the globe’s children had no babies of his own.

The portrait above, from The Bookman, Vol. 27, 1908, pictures a kindly looking gentleman but his cartoons often showed cruelty in regard to animals. But then, kids were tougher in those days and parents were strict. Before the turn of the century North Americans were mostly rural dwellers, and death was more visible than it is now. 

2 [Sept. 1893] The Ladies’ Home Journal

COX (b.1840) drifted from railroad work, art school and a stint as a jeweller to newspaper cartooning in California, before moving to New York about 1876 where he created The Brownies, which ran serially in St. Nicholas children’s magazine. The characters were also published in the Ladies’ Home Journal and were heroes of a short lived color Sunday comic strip. 

3 [1894] The Brownies

His first book was Squibs of California, or, Every-day life illustrated by Su Donim, published in San Francisco in 1874. This was followed by How Columbus Found America; In pen and pencil (1877), That Stanley (1878), Hans von Pelter’s Trip to Gotham (1879) and Comic Yarns (1888).

His memoirs were published (date unknown) as Frontier Humor; Some rather ludicrous experiences that befell myself and my acquaintances among frontier characters before I made the acquaintance of my esteemed friends “The Brownies.” 

Cox’s book Queer People and their Kweer Kapers; Birds that talk, giants that flee, beasts that think, insects that flirt, sprites that dance, with their various antics illustrated was published in Toronto, by Rose, in 1888. Queer People ran to three volumes.

4 [1885] Wisdom in Fable

Cox used woodcut advertisements in Harper’s Weekly and in newspaper columns to promote his neverending series of books. His serial comics appeared in Wild Oats and The Graphic. The Brownies were featured on posters and theatrical hoardings. They were a merchandising phenomenon to rival the later The Yellow Kid.There were thirteen Brownie books and two successful touring stage plays, Palmer Cox’s Brownies and The Brownies in Fairyland.

5 [Nov. 23, 1893]

“I had been brought up among Scotch people and had heard a great deal about the traditions of the Highlands, where they still believe in fees and hobgoblins. Brownies had always taken my fancy. They were intelligent, observing little fellows, who knew all about mortals and helped them when they were good. The Brownies could point the moral I wanted for my stories, so I utilized them. They were a new departure in literature and made a hit from the first.” — ‘Palmer Cox, Brownie Man, at 77 Hard at Work in East Quogue,’ Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 16, 1896  

6 [1886] St. Nicholas

Palmer Cox, who was born at the Scottish settlement of Granby, Quebec, April 28, 1840, quit drawing The Brownies in 1918 and died at his home in Granby on July 24, 1924, when he was 84.

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“Aerial Alphabets” — The Age of Disfigurement

“…When street architecture disappears, when the metropolis becomes one vast expanse of aerial alphabets, when the dome of St. Paul’s and the towers of Westminster are intercepted by a gigantic web of posts and rails, the dullest soul will feel that a wanton outrage is being perpetrated. I went on cynically to reflect that someday or other the crazy structure would come down with a rush…” — The Age of Disfigurement by Richardson Evans, National Review, October 1890.

 

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 Illustration by Alfred Concanen (1835-86). The fold-out frontispiece to Henry Sampson’s A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times; Illustrated by anecdotes, curious specimens and biographical notes, lithographic stone print in five colors, 1874.

Original Hergé inspired Comics Art in Cartoonmuseum Basel

 

[2013] Picture rhyme fun by Exem.

The Cartoonmuseum Basel, in Switzerland, uses this funny drawing to advertise its latest exhibition of original comics art inspired by the work of Tintin author Hergé from Belgium, opened Saturday. The art is by Swiss comics artist Exem, penname of Emmanuel Excoffier (Geneva, 1951). It shows comics art characters as well as authors who have been bombarded with the ‘clear line’ label. Exem obviously had great fun in composing this picture rhyme full of quotations of comic strip characters and their backgrounds.

Covering both sides of the white centerline, in yellow Chinese robes, are Belgian authors Remi and Jacobs. In the crowd behind them is Belgian artist Ever Meulen (‘E’), walking shoulder to shoulder with Tintin/Kuifje. Hergé biographer Huib van Opstal tells me this drawing alone can easily lead to a page-long footnote. For instance on inventor Edward N. Hines, whose genius led to white centerlines on streets and motorways, read more HERE.

Dutch artist Joost Swarte came up with the label ‘De Klare Lijn’ in 1977, as the title for a little catalogue for the Hergé inspired exhibition of original comics art ‘Kuifje in Rotterdam’ (Tintin in Rotterdam) in the Lijnbaancentrum of the Rotterdam Arts Council. A label soon translated into la ligne claire and the clear line.

The present  exhibition in Basel shows a wide range of original art by no less than fifty artists from Europe as well as America.

Visit the Cartoonmuseum Basel HERE.

St. Alban-Vorstadt 28, in Basel.

The Adventures of the Ligne claire. The Herr G. & Co. Affair.

Hergé inspired exhibition of original comics art.

October 26, 2013, to March 9, 2014.

Cartoonmuseum Basel
St. Alban-Vorstadt 28
CH-4052 Basel

Tuesday-Friday 14.00-18.00
Saturday-Sunday 11.00-18.00

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The Lost Chord; or, Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady! – [Tom Noddy 3]

THERE ARE, as perhaps the reader knows, two different ways of drawing for wood. One is, to paint a finished picture in black and white, using the brush and washes of different degrees of intensity; picking out the lights with white, or leaving the white paper for them. The [wood] engraver translates this in his own way, cutting his own lines to represent or, rather, interpret the value of the tone left by the artist. In this case the artist is very much at the mercy of his engraver.
[…]
THE OTHER way is to draw one’s picture with pencil, or, better still, with pen and ink [on wood], using a simple conventional black outline to give the shape and enclose the form and face; then adding more lines and pen-and-ink scratches, simple or cross-hatched, to suggest colour and tone, as an etcher does with his needle, and leaving blank all that the artist judges non-essential to his picture — leaving it in fact, to the imagination. The engraver cuts all this in facsimile; it is more than his place is worth to add a line of his own, or leave out one of the artist’s.

[…]
I confess that, to me, the second is the more attractive of the two.

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THE LOST CHORD

by George du Maurier 

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in The Christmas Number of Punch

and Punch’s Almanack for 1894.

[1 to 4]

[5 to 8]

[9 to 12]

[13 to 16]

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QUOTE by George du Maurier, from his essay The Illustration of Books from the Serious Artist’s Point of View, in the Magazine of Art 13, 1890.

Thanks to Mr Punch.

Frans Masereel (1889-1972)

[1] The City, 1925, FM.

THE FAMOUS Belgian wood-engraver, Frans MASEREEL, is revealed as a painter of uncommon ability in his solo exhibition AT THE PERLS GALLERIES. His early watercolors are comparable, in their strength and impelling force, to those of GEORGE BELLOWS at his best … this man, Masereel, is a great artist. The average sociologist would require at least 50,000 words to express what Masereel does in a few eloquent WOODCUT LINES. Born in Belgium, raised in Paris, and, one might say, buttered in Switzerland, he NOW LIVES IN PARIS, caught in the trap laid by professional disturbers of the peace. — ‘At the Art Galleries,’ Brooklyn Eagle, October 22, 1939

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[2] ‘Irish Bar,’ watercolor.

[3] Vanity Fair, February 1922.

[4] ‘Times Square,’ woodcut.

[5] Capitale, April 20, 1935.

[6] First of 66 cuts.

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

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[18] Passionate Journey, 1919.

[19] Passionate Journey.

[20] Passionate Journey.

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Angoulême 41 Eye Shock

     

RELEASED today, the poster for the Angoulême Festival international de la bande dessinée, edition 41, near Bordeaux in France, January next.

Designed by this year’s laureate Willem (72), penname of Dutchman Bernard Willem Holtrop, political cartoonist and stripmaker since the 1960s — “Black humor is the only humor that never ages.” With a little self-portrait, of course, as the henpecked husband chased by his lovely wife Medi.

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