A Scene from Anne of Geierstein

Steel or copper engraving by George Cruikshank (1792–1878), illustrating Walter Scott's 1829 Swiss-set novel Anne of Geierstein. The crowded interior — a tavern or inn — shows a tall, broad-hatted traveller entering at left, a dog at his heels, while a roomful of drinkers, card-players, and onlookers react with comic alarm or indifference. Cruikshank's line work exaggerates physiques in the tradition he inherited from Gillray and Rowlandson: the figures are rubbery, large-nosed, thick-limbed — class caricature common to the period, applied here to a mixed crowd of inn-dwellers rather than a specific ethnic target. Cruikshank's career links Georgian print satire directly to sequential narrative art; his illustrated broadsheets and book plates are recognised precursors of the modern comic strip's panel-by-panel storytelling.