Thomas Mayne Reid, 'Men of the Day' No. 58

James Tissot's chromolithograph presents the Irish-American adventure novelist Thomas Mayne Reid (1818–1883) in three-quarter length, clutching a cigar in one gloved hand and a top hat in the other. He wears a long frock coat over light trousers, his dark curly hair framing a flushed, bulbous-nosed face — the nose rendered comedically red and oversized, a standard Vanity Fair device. The caption, 'Impossible Romance,' needles his prolific output of frontier melodramas set in an American West he partly fabricated. Reid had genuine frontier credentials — he fought at Chapultepec — yet London society found his self-mythologising irresistible material. The plate is numbered 227, series No. 58.