The Efflorescence of Caricature by Todd Porterfield (ed.)

'International, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary' (p. xv) is how Porterfield positions this ambitious collection which analyses caricature between 1759 and 1838. A product of a conference of the same name, the essays it contains fulfil this remit admirably whilst attempting to explain the rise of caricature. Moreover, as Porterfield writes in his introductory offering, these essays seek to loosen the study of caricature from the orthodoxies of satirical print scholarship, and one suspects from the canonical texts of the field familiar to scholars of the long 18th century. This is not to say that those canons are rejected, rather The Efflorescence of Caricature foregrounds the vibrancy and variety of current research in this area, not least by moving away from the anglocentric narratives of anglophonic scholarship and the assumptions they contain. Thus in this desire to ask new questions of this source material alone, the collection represents a far from insignificant success....