HRH the Prince of Wales, 1842. 5 x 8¾ inches. Lithographic print by W. Kohler for Richard Doyle’s The Christening Procession of Prince Taffy. London: Fores [1842]. This book is one of Doyle’s early comic-strips, produced, essentially, as an apprentice-piece, when he was just 18 and before he joined Punch. The scene is one of 24 plates; some were printed in black and white, as here) and some were hand-coloured. Very few of either type survived, and the book is a rare piece of ephemera; it is not known how many were published, but numbers would have been small. It commemorates the christening of the future Edward VII, depicting the various figures in a broad caricatural style and making use of the linear tableaux that was also used for An Overland Journey to the Great Exhibition (1851). Here, though, the plates were issued as separate prints loosely inserted in limp wrappers, and there is no evidence that it was ever bound. Doyle had earlier collaborated with Fores, who published his comic envelopes in 1840.
Text and scan by Simon Cooke. This is a book in the Simon Cooke Collection. Please request permission to reproduce the image.
Created 2 February 2025