Title Page from A Select Collection of Humourous Engravings, Caricatures etc.

Print sellers assembled sets of caricature prints to be rented out as entertainment for parties. This title page is from one such collection. In his memoirs, the Hon. Grantley Berkeley described a scene at a country house party similar to the one depicted here. He noted that even the most reserved guests become social over a portfolio of ludicrous scenes in which celebrated personages have acted with more or less success. Shy girls and silent young men generally get on pretty well by means of such a medium-in truth, grave and reverend seignors and ancient tabbies have been found to grow quite amiable, as well as cheerful, as the more equivocal prints were turned over.