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George Russell, MP — 'Wokingham' by Leslie Ward
Public domain · digitally restored by ComicBooks.com
Men of the Day: The Vanity Fair Caricatures

George Russell, MP — 'Wokingham'

Leslie Ward · Vanity Fair, 2 March 1889

Leslie Ward ('Spy') renders George Russell, Liberal MP for East Berkshire, in sharp profile: top hat, black morning coat, tan trousers, hands pocketed, chin jutting forward with patrician assurance. The caption 'Wokingham' anchors him to his constituency rather than his name — a Vanity Fair habit that assumed readers already knew their men. Russell was a landed gentleman-politician of moderate reforming instinct, and Ward's line captures exactly that type: upright, self-possessed, faintly immovable. The caricature exaggerates the long nose and receding chin without ethnic malice; its comedy is purely social, targeting English upper-class complacency rather than anything beyond class. The chromolithograph was printed by Vincent Brooks, Day & Son, the firm that produced virtually every plate in the series.

About this artifact

Creator
Leslie Ward
Date
Vanity Fair, 2 March 1889
Rights
Public domain — free to view, share, and reuse.
Restoration
Digitally restored and hosted by ComicBooks.com.

Part of our mission to preserve and restore the public-domain heritage of the medium.