#broadsheets

EPISODE 3 - PRINT CULTURE GETS GOING

In today’s video we examine the birth of print culture. That means starting with Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press! There are a million videos of replicas of the Gutenberg press (we don’t actually have the plans of the original, so we don’t know exactly what it looked like!), but some of the best (imho) are here,here, and…if you have some time…here.

One of my biggest sources for this piece was David Kunzle’s The Early Comic Strip. It’s out of print and a bit difficult to get a hold of–but see if your library can get it for you. It’s full of fascinating stuff.

There’s a lot of information on the early British political cartoonists out there online. Here’s a nice introductory article. You can also browse the Library of Congress, which has a nice collection of these pieces.

One side story I didn’t tell was how caricature got a French cartoonist jailed.The magazine La Caricature was founded in 1830. The main author was a man names Charles Philipon, who was incredibly critical of King Louis-Philippe and frequently published illustrations making fun of the king. The most famous of these was an Honore Daumier piece based on one of Philipon’s own sketches that compared Louis-Philippe to a pear. 

The pear became a broader symbol of the breakdown of the king’s government. Between 1831 and 1835, the offices of the journal were seized by the government over a dozen times and Philipon himself spent at least a year in jail.

A bit light this week, but after recovering from illness next week, we’re getting back to it! See you then!