Comic map of Italy as Guiseppe Garibaldi. Designed by Lilian Lancaster for “Geographical Fun”, London 1868

Colour-printed lithograph. Sheet edges slightly toned with two small areas of darker staining in upper left and right, in blank margins only, not affecting printed image. Very slight paper crease at upper right corner in blank margin only. With all an attractive & well-preserved example.

Comic map of Italy in the form of the great Italian patriot and “father of the fatherland”, Guiseppe Garibaldi [1807-1882]. Renowned leader of I Mille – the so-called redshirts [1860], he was also a critical figure in the Risorgimento (unification of Italy) eventually completed in 1871.  Garibaldi had gained a huge popularity in Britain following visits to South Shields in 1854 and a three-week long visit to London in April 1864. The latter drew massive crowds and secured his celebrity status in Britain, as well as leaving a lasting legacy for  the British biscuit lover!

The map appeared in Geographical Fun: Being Humorous Outlines of Various Countries with Introduction and Descriptive Lines by “Aleph.”, first published by the London firm of Hodder & Stoughton in December 1868. The twelve map designs were the work of the talented teenage artist, Eliza Jane Lancaster [1852-1939], whom the Introduction to the book claims had come up with the idea of these map designs “when seeking to amuse a brother confined to his bed by illness.”

Eliza Jane would subsequently become a successful Victorian actress adopting the stage name Lilian Lancaster. Initially trained under the auspices of the Haymarket Theatre’s stage manager, Thomas Coe [c1820?-1886], well-known for his schooling of juvenile Victorian actors and actresses during this period, her stage debut took place at the Haymarket in April 1871 in Tom Noddy’s Secret. She rapidly became a popular provincial actress, comedienne and pantomime artiste, working mainly in the North of England, especially for the companies of theatrical impresarios Sefton Parry and Wilson Barrett. She became particularly closely associated with Barrett’s Theatre Royal in Hull. She toured New York and the Eastern United States in 1880-81, initially with English actor George Conquest’s Grim Goblin Theatre Company. Her renditions of the comic song, Lardy Dah, at New York’s Wallack’s Theatre during performances of the ill-fated Grim Goblin in the summer of 1880 brought further US fame & popularity. In late 1883 she toured the British Isles & Ireland in the Company of famous Shakespearean actor, Barry Sullivan. Her stage career effectively ended following her marriage to William Edward Tennant in August 1884. Even in her later years, she continued to remain active as an artist and map designer, working with female author, E L Hoskyn, to produce a series of 12 attractive map designs to illustrate her book of popular fables & fairy tales, Stories of Old [London, 1912].

The descriptive lines are by London journalist and antiquarian, Dr. William Harvey [1796-1873], who worked under the pen name “Aleph”. It is probable that Harvey and Lancaster had become acquainted in North London’s Islington area, where both Harvey and Lancaster’s mother’s family appear to have been close neighbours in the 1860’s.

The twelve comic maps that comprise Geographical Fun were in fact published primarily a self-improving mnemonic aid for young Victorian students, as Harvey himself highlights in the book’s Introduction:

It is believed that these illustrations of Geography may be rendered educational, and prove of service to young scholars, who commonly think Globes and Maps but wearisome aids to knowledge, by enabling them to retain the outline of various countries so humorously caricatured in the work, by associating them in their mind’s eye with odd fancy figures. The bluffs and headlands of Scotland would be identified with the struggling Piper….If these geographical puzzles excite the mirth of children; the amusement of a moment may lead to the profitable curiosity of youthful students, and embue the mind with a healthful taste for an acquaintance with foreign lands. No history, no journal can be understood without a knowledge of maps, and good service is done when we make such information more easy and agreeable. 

 Refs: Lilian Lancaster