Cabinet of American Illustration

Cabinet of American Illustration from the Library of Congress includes 4,000 drawings and sketches produced as illustrations for American books and magazines. The collection was established by William Patten who was the art editor for Harper's Magazine during the 1880s and 1890s, and is now online at http://memory.loc.gov/pp/caiquery.html

More on the collection from Artstor.org "The original art works — illustrations for magazines, novels, and children's books, cartoons, cover designs, and sketches for posters — document what many consider to be the golden age of American illustration, from the 1880s through the 1920s. Over 200 artists are represented in the collection, including F.O.C. Darley, Thomas Nast, Charles Dana Gibson, Arthur Burdett Frost, and Oliver Herford. Also well represented are notable female illustrators, such as Elizabeth Shippen Green, Alice Barber Stephens, Jessie Willcox Smith, Charlotte Harding, and Rose O'Neill."

Here is a little historical exercise using inference and an image I found on the site. The game here is to fish for an image and then do an inference. I call it searchin'fer. See where it takes you.

This illustration from A. B. Frost appeared in 1881 in Harper's Weekly. The capitions read "Philanthrophist: "How dare you abuse that poor little dog." Chorus of outraged urchins: "He's been and gone and swallored de ball and busted up de boss of de season, dat's why!"


The LOC summary reads "Humorous illustration shows a wealthy man wearing an overcoat over his suit, gesturing with a closed umbrella toward a skinny dog with its tail between its legs as he chastises a group of boys for beating it. The boys defend their actions, having lost their baseball, which the dog swallowed therby ending their season. The action takes place before a wooden fence decorated with posters announcing baseball games, theatrical performances and excursions to Coney Island."

We can infer a couple of interesting things from this cartoon. First, baseball was a common enough street game to go unmentioned in caption. The distinction be the the "philanthropist" and the "urchins" is also interesting. The use of de and dat are particular interesting. Dat is typically associate with African American Vernacular English (AAVE). From the Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1998 by Tom McArthr.

"Word-initial /d/ often takes the place of /ð/, as in ‘dat day’ for that day and ‘dis house’ for this house. vernacular."

Given the race of these children, AAVE seems to be less situated in race than in class.