Most of the allusions to literature, painting, and sculpture in Fun use the well-known work to satirize some aspect of a famous political figure or situation, most often a Prime Minister and his opponents. The exceptions — poems and cartoons that mock the work of art or literature — are marked *** below. — George P. Landow
Painting
- Going to Congress (Disraeli and Gladstone as figures in Millais's Hugenots)
- Broken Vows (Abe Lincoln as the woman in Calderon’s painting of that name
- Recollections of the [1878] Royal Academy. No. I (parodies of Calderon, Millais, Prinsep, and others)***
- Parodying art criticism — a mock review of the Old Masters at the British Institution***
- Chained to the Counter; or the Modern Andromeda
- Dignity and Impudence
- Try Me!
- Missed Again
Sculpture
- On the Square? (Landseer’s Trafalgar Square lions, Disraeli, and the 1867 Reform Bill)
- A Pretty Coil about a Chancellor, or, the modern Laocoon (The famous statue and a scandal)
- “The New ‘Great Deliverer’
- Hercules Reposing
- A Pretty Coil About A Chancellor, or the Modern Laocoon
- “Nineveh, Its Manners and Habits” — Fun looks at Victorian England as if it were Ancient Nineveh
Literature
- The Roman Winkle (Napoleon III, Pope Pius IX, and Winkle from Pickwick Papers)
- “The Onion Girl” — a poem (Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”) ***
- “The Frozen Deep” (a parody)***
- “Measured with Bright,” a parody of Browning’s dramatic monologues***
- “The Return of the Tourist,” a parody of Swinburne ***
- You smell this business with a sense as cold as a dead man’s nose (Shakespeare)
- “How to Write a Patriotic Poem”
- The Ancient Mariner — another “Terrible Tale of the Sea”
- The Rime of the Modern Shipowner
Last modified 31 March 2019