Prints of a New Kind

“Stagg’s description of the social nature of caricatures [is] fascinating. . . . [She] does excellent historical detective work in tracking down America’s earliest caricaturists.”—Jonathan Den Hartog, Current

“By highlighting the surprisingly robust market for caricatures, and intense competition for readership among publications in the Early Republic, this book is a welcome addition to the canon.”—Flora Khoo, American Journalism

“Discussing prints made and distributed in the United States during the early republic, Stagg uses exhaustive research into archival and published sources to uncover new details about the creation and dissemination of early American political prints. This study effectively chronicles how caricaturists adapted source material, targeted audiences, and addressed contemporary political issues amid an expanding culture of visually engaging printed matter.”—Vanessa Schulman, caa.reviews

“Prints of a New Kind lives up to its claims of filling a gap in our knowledge and launching a new area of study.”—Ian Haywood, American Literary History

“Stagg’s book establishes an important space in which questions such as this one can be raised and provides a groundwork for scholars to begin to approach these prints with broader political questions beyond elections, wars, and foreign policy, in mind. Her work points the way forward to how caricature studies might bring further complexity to transatlantic and imperially focused art histories including consideration of the American nation as an imperial power.”—Jennifer Van Horn, Eighteenth-Century Studies

“Thoroughly engaging with a well-crafted narrative, Prints of a New Kind is a long-awaited study filling a significant void in the history of American print culture. Allison Stagg sets the stage for a modern and popularized notion of political satire. This elegantly written book, lavishly illustrated, places the American tradition of caricature as separate from its European origins, with its own merits and history worthy of detailed examination.”—Nancy Siegel, author of Along the Juniata: Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery

“Prints of a New Kind contributes fresh awareness and understanding of early US political caricature from an art historical perspective. By doggedly tracing the locations of early caricatures in numerous archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Stagg has uncovered previously unknown examples and made new discoveries about the making and circulation of political caricatures in the early American Republic.”—Nan Wolverton, Vice President for Programs and Director of Fellowships, American Antiquarian Society

Allison M. Stagg is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Art History at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Caricature in the United States, 1789–1820

2. James Akin’s Career Before Caricature

3. America’s First Caricaturist

4. The Business of Caricature in the 1810s

5. Copperplate to Lithography, 1820–1830

Conclusion: “The First Will Grumble and the Last Will Laugh”

Appendix: Catalogue of Caricatures Published in America Between 1780 and 1828

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Art History & Architecture

           American

           Eighteenth-century

           Nineteenth-century

History

           Eighteenth-century

           Nineteenth-century

           U.S.

Political Science

           American Politics