Leslie Ward ('Spy'), 'Anthony Hope,' Vanity Fair, 1895

The plate shows Anthony Hope Hawkins — novelist, best known for The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) — in sharp profile, rendered in Spy's characteristic economy of line. He stands three-quarter length in a dark frock coat and grey trousers, a cigarette held loosely in his right hand, left tucked into his pocket: the posture of a man at effortless ease. The caption reads simply 'Anthony Hope.' Ward's caricature flatters as much as it distorts — the high dome, the prominent nose, the slightly sunken jaw are exaggerated but not unkind. The politics are those of celebrity: Zenda's runaway success had made Hope a fashionable literary property, and Vanity Fair's plate confirms his arrival among the estimable men of the day.