FSLG Annual Review - Senate House Libraries - University of London

caricaturists. Indeed, this was a critical point in French political history when the
conservative republicanism and quasi-monarchism of Adolphe Thiers and the
Versailles Assembly came into violent conflict with the democratic-socialist
Communards and the ideologically in-between group that would eventually form the
republican opposition under Léon Gambetta. Napoleon III was a symbolic figurehead
for many caricaturists seeking to map out the
range of acceptable political opinion but he was
used alongside others such as Thiers, Jules Favre,
Gambetta, Emile Ollivier, the monarchist
pretenders, army generals and the Communard
leadership.
If one's academic interests do not necessarily lie
with Napoleon III then rest assured that this
collection contains depictions of all the other
major political figures of the era. Virtually any
political figure of significance was caricatured
multiple times as they were used by the artists to
carve out realms of political normalcy for the
readership to squeeze neatly into. Additionally,
the caricatures do not concern themselves with
politics only. The social moeurs, norms and
Napoleon III placed in the stocks
is the first image of H. Mailly’s
series Le Pilori
eccentricities of Parisians through months of siege
warfare are the subject of entire series of
caricatures by the likes of Cham and Daumier.
Concluding thoughts
My approach to the collection
casts a wide net but does not
by any means exhaust all
possibilities for future fruitful
study. Indeed, any study of the
Parisian representations of key
figures such as Thiers or
Bismarck would be remiss if it
were not to utilise this
excellent resource. In a more
general sense, studies of
representations of the Franco-
Prussian War, the Commune,
and even of women and French
J. Corseaux, ‘Actualités: Plaignons là!’ – Ernest Picard,
Jules Favre and Adolphe Thiers subdue Paris (the
Marianne figure) and buy peace from the Prussians.
social moeurs, would be greatly enhanced by the consultation of this collection. For
this reason, I will look to publish a follow-up article to that of Daniels in the
Electronic British Library Journal and investigate the possibility of the digitization and
exhibition of this wonderful collection.
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