The reconciliation between Britain and her daughter America. Thomas Colley. 1782 May 11. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZC4-5278. bibliographic record

Politics have long been a favored topic of the press, conveyed through satirical treatments as well as more ostensibly neutral reporting. The division's British Cartoons (10,000 prints, 1621-1832) include visual commentaries on the developing American political consciousness. Women appear in the prints, generally as symbols. Determining the degree of their representation is difficult, however, because of the limited subject access to the collection.

Further information about the British Cartoons can be found in the “About This Collection” information in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog.

Searching the Collection

Many images for which copies have been produced can be searched in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, where the collection has its own listing, “Cartoon Prints, British.” Digitized images accompany most online records.

The full collection is listed in a combination of published and unpublished finding aids:

• The publication Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Division I. of Political and Personal Satires [catalog record] lists prints found in the British Museum collections. Prints and Photographs (P&P) staff have annotated the division's copy of this multi-volume, chronologically arranged checklist to indicate which prints are held by P&P. There is some limited subject indexing for prints dating between 1771 and 1832.
• An unpublished finding aid, “British Cartoons Owned by P&P Not Listed in BMC” enumerates the prints in P&P holdings that are not found in the above publication. This unpublished checklist is in two volumes: vol. 1: Undated cartoons, listed by title; vol. 2: Dated cartoons, listed chronologically.
• A card catalog in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room indexes the portion of the collection not found in the British Museum, with listings by title, artist, printseller and publisher.

Microfilm serves as a reference surrogate for the original prints.

Go to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)