Cruikshank, George:

$1,250 · Offered by William Reese Company

PROBABLE EFFECTS OF OVER FEMALE EMIGRATION, OR IMPORTING THE FAIR SEX OF THE SAVAGE ISLANDS IN CONSEQUENCE OF EXPORTING OUR OWN TO AUSTRALIA!!!!! An excellent example of this satirical print drawn by illustrator and cartoonist George Cruikshank, and issued with his THE COMIC ALMANAC for 1851. Cruikshank was a notable artist who contributed illustrations to the works of Charles Dickens, among others. Throughout the first decades of Australian settlement, men outnumbered women to an extraordinary degree, resulting in grave social problems for the new colony. Active attempts to address the imbalance included immigration drives for women in Britain. Cruikshank's burlesque cartoon imagines that the supposed exodus of women who took up offers of assisted passage to Australia has created a critical shortage of women in England. His dockside scene depicts the ship-load of Pacific Island women - all of whom are drawn as African savages with exaggerated Black features, some with stretched ears, etc. - who have responded to the desperate call of the crowd of pallid Englishmen, greeting them upon arrival.

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