Smoking Clubs in Graphic Satire and the Anglicizing of Tobacco in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Focusing on A smoking club (1793/7) by James Gillray, this essay presents satiric representations of smoking clubs in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British prints, arguing that they reflect and mediate contemporary understandings of tobacco as an intoxicant in British associational life. The breadth of potential cultural connotations – from political and social parody to light-hearted humour – is traced through the content and imagery of selected prints. These prints rely on the familiarity of contemporary audiences with political and social knowledge, as well as a visual iconography iconically realized in William Hogarth's A midnight modern conversation (1732).

Book Reviews

John Etty, Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil’s Political Cartoons (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2019). 276 pp. ISBN: 978-1496821089 ($30)Livio Belloï and Fabrice Leroy, Pierre La Police: Une esthétique de la malfaçon (Paris: Serious Publishing, 2019). 200 pp. ISBN: 9782363200266 (30€)