Cruikshank, George

(born , Sept. 27, 1792, London, Eng.—died Feb. 1, 1878, London) English painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. His series of political caricatures for The Scourge (1811–16) established him as the leading political cartoonist of his generation, and he continued to satirize the policies of the Tories and Whigs in political cartoons until c. 1825. In the 1820s and '30s he produced book illustrations, notably for Charles Dickens's Sketches by “Boz” (1836) and Oliver Twist (1838). In later life he embraced the cause of temperance with his series The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard's Children (1848).

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