Thomas Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax drawings Book

Doctor Syntax, one of the most popular characters in nineteenth-century English fiction made his public debut in May 1809 in the first issue of Poetical Magazine under the editorial supervision of publisher and art dealer Rudolph Ackermann. Under the title 'The Schoolmaster's Tour', the magazine featured its first installment of the adventures and misadventures of this eccentric traveller and pedantic cleric, illustrated with aquatint drawings by the prolific caricaturist and comic artist, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), with narrative commentary by William Combe. Although Doctor Syntax became something of a folk hero, stimulating many copies in the nineteenth-century, the last reprint of Rowlandson's own work was in 1868. Since then, the series has never been reproduced in its entirety. Jerold Savory's Thomas Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax Drawings is the first book to include all the illustrations to the three Tours of Doctor Syntax. With over eighty reproductions, each accompanied by a commentary by the author and selections from the original verse, and many illustrations from sequels and other 'Syntaxiana', this book will become the definitive study of Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax illustrations and of the phenomenon that the character became.