Life in Philadelphia (London).
Title
Life in Philadelphia (London)
Description
Collection of social caricatures lampooning the pretensions of early 19th-century middle-class Philadelphians, mainly the city's growing community of free African Americans. Influenced by an increasing fascination with American culture and a growing racism stemming from the abolition of slavery in England, the African American characters are depicted with grotesque features and manners, wearing outlandish clothes, and speaking in patois and malapropisms to be portrayed as ineptly attempting to mimic white high society. Subject matter of the caricatures include absurd scenes of courtship and displays of etiquette on the street, at residences, at society balls, and in allegory; fashion; promenades; the abolition of slavery; the election of President Andrew Jackson; tea parties; and depictions of African Americans at work., British reprint of E.W. Clay's "Life in Philadelphia" series with ten of the original fourteen prints redrawn by William Summers, etched with aquatint by Charles Hunt, and published by Harrison Isaacs in London in the early 1830s. W.H. Isaacs continued issuing the prints altering the original content of the series by adding new subjects and removing the white caricatures. Around 1833 engraver and print seller, Gabriel Shire Treager assumed the publication of the series and added six new subjects creating a series of twenty. In 1834, Tregear published a similar series of caricatures in book form without the "Life in Philadelphia" moniker entitled, "Tregear's Black Jokes, being a Series of Laughable Caricatures in the March of Manners amongst Blacks." In 1860, London publisher T. C. Lewis reissued the series of twenty prints. Variants of prints from the series and additional caricatures with similar content; "The Cut Direct," "Sketches of Character. At Home and Abroad," "Philadelphia Dandies," and "The Lay Patroness of Alblacks" have been included as a part of the series., LCP AR [Annual Report] 1967 p. 51-53., LCP AR [Annual Report] 1968 p. 18-20., Nancy Reynolds Davison's E.W. Clay: American Political Caricaturist of the Jacksonian Era (PhD. diss., The University of Michigan, 1980), p. 85-100. (LCP Print Room Uz, A423.O)
Creator
Summers, William, artist
Date
ca. 1831-ca. 1860, bulk 1831-1834
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Life in Philadelphia (London Set)