Edmund Burke

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For more than thirty years until his death in 1797, the statesman and writer Edmund Burke was a powerful and passionate voice on the great political issues of late eighteenth-century Britain. The broad range of his interests, and the fact that he was Irish with Catholic connections, make Burke a favourite target of leading caricaturists such as Gillray, Rowlandson, Dent and Sayers. This book follows and sheds new light on Burke's political, literary and personal life by examining a wide selection of caricatures, often vitriolic and sometimes scurrilous, in which he was featured. Nicholas Robinson puts the caricatures in context by reconstructing the day-to-day episodes of social and parliamentary activity and by reviewing the debates that took place about such issues as the influence of the Crown, relations with America, the governance of India, and the French Revolution. He shows how caricature was forged into a formidable political weapon, unravels the caricaturists' devices in representing the mannerisms and characteristics of Burke and his contemporaries, and investigates how Burke and other political figures, including Charles James Fox, William Pitt, Warren Hastings, George III, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, fared as the subjects of the satirical prints.