Marie Duval by Simon Grennan, Rodger Sabin and Julian Waite

Marie Duval (1847–1890) was a groundbreaking Victorian female cartoonist whose wide range of work, depicting an urban, often working class milieu, has been largely forgotten. This is a book for pleasure: the first to celebrate her life and work.

'Marie Duval is one of the forgotten wonders of 19th-century art. Her drawings have something in common with Honoré Daumier, but also look forward almost uncannily to modern comics in their fantastical surreal wit.' Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

'A superb study…Combining fascinating insight with honesty and appraisal, we’re treated to an extraordinary journey into the world of late Victorian humour… positively glorious.' John Freeman, Down the Tubes

Hardback: 144 pages
Size: 278 mm x 216 mm

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BDUVAL

Special Price £15.99 Regular Price £19.99

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What did it mean to be a woman working in the man’s world of cartooning? MARIE DUVAL is a celebration of the art and times of Marie Duval – a unique, pioneering, innovative and highly entertaining visual journalist, cartoonist and illustrator whose work appeared in serial magazines and books at a time when the identity of the artist, in Victorian England, was in radical flux. Both a stage actress as well as an artist, Duval was uniquely placed to take advantage of the first appearance of a mass leisure culture by contributing to the weekly magazines that combined current affairs and theatrics with a focus on urban life.

The work of Marie Duval confounds one of our most commonplace ideas of the Victorian era––that women were not supposed to create or even to participate in public life and certainly not meant to be either comic or professional. Her comic strips were not only pioneering in terms of what we have come to call ‘comics,’ but present a vernacular comedy that frequently undercuts and supercedes the work of her male contemporaries.

The book provides an entertaining visual account of the work of Duval as she struggled and succeeded in creating a new urban visual culture. It will look in turn at key aspects of Victorian mass leisure industry, such as tourism, day-tripping, fashion, the theatre, art and the ‘season.’ Placing Duval in the visual context of the emerging profession of visual journalism, this illustrated book offers an enticing glimpse of the exciting, strange and world-changing media environment of London in the last part of the nineteenth century.

Hardback
Length: 144 Pages
Language: English
Publisher: Myriad Editions
Publication date: 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9955900-9-0
Size: 278 mm x 216 mm

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