Comic map of Wales in the form of Owen Glendower (Glyndwr), designed by Lilian Lancaster, “Geographical Fun” London 1868

[ Geographical Fun ] Wales

Colour-printed lithograph. Sheet edges very lightly soiled and browned. Sheet corners slightly rounded and bumped, as almost invariably the case with these maps. Very light & barely noticeable circular mark to paper at lower right.  With all a very attractive and presentable example.

Comic map of the Principality of Wales by the Victorian teenage artist, Lilian Lancaster and designed in the form of its famous medieval leader, Owen Glendower 0r Glyndwr [c1359-1415], the last native-born Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales and here portrayed in royal attire, complete with jewelled crown, national coats of arms (the Three feathered armorial of the Prince of Wales & the symbolic Welsh harp) and resplendent embroidered robes. Glendower headed  a long and hard-fought revolt against English control of the Principality during the reigns of King Henry IV & V from 1400 onwards. The accompanying text alludes to Wales’ warrior past and to Arthurian legend as well as to its other renowned national symbols: cheese and leeks.

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 were produced 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