A selection of postcards showing political cartoons and caricatures by British illustrator, Harry Furniss (1854-1925).
Harry Furniss (26 March 1854 – 14 January 1925) was born in Wexford, Ireland, but he identified himself as English, his father being English and his mother Scottish. He was educated at Dublin’s Wesley College.
Furniss' s first job as an illustrator was for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, and when it was purchased by the owner of The Illustrated London News he moved to that magazine. After some years he moved to The Graphic, initially writing and illustrating a series of supplements titled "Life in Parliament", and he comments that "from this time forward it would be difficult to name any illustrated paper with which I have not at some time or other been connected".
His most famous humorous drawings were published in Punch, for which he started working in 1880, and to which he contributed over 2,600 drawings. He left Punch in 1894 when its owners discovered that he had sold one of his 'Punch' drawings to Pears Soap for use in an advertising campaign.
He illustrated Lewis Carroll's novel “Sylvie and Bruno” in 1889 and “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded” in 1893.
On leaving Punch, Furniss brought out his own humorous magazine "Lika Joko", but when this failed he moved to America where he worked as a writer and actor in the fledgling film industry and where, in 1914, he pioneered the first animated cartoon film for Thomas Edison.
His two-volume autobiography, titled The Confessions of a Caricaturist was published in 1902, and a further volume of personal recollections and anecdotes, Harry Furniss At Home, was published in 1904.
Furniss wrote and illustrated twenty-nine books of his own and illustrated thirty-four works by other authors, including the complete works of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Furniss married Marian Rogers in the Strand in 1877.
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