The comic history of Rome
Gilbert Abbott à Beckett's burlesque retelling of Roman history, illustrated by Punch cartoonist John Leech and published in London by Bradbury, Evans in 1850 for a middle-class readership amused by classical schooling. The wood-engraved vignettes put Victorian faces, top hats and umbrellas on togaed senators, legionaries and crowds, giving designers loose-hatched comic figures, anachronistic props and small scene groupings.
