Cheshire Puss 

This is Arthur Rackham's illustration of the Cheshire Cat, made sometime between 1907 and 1939. Rackham had an important place in the Edwardian era "golden age" of British book illustration. Publishing houses like Macmillan were then developing innovative printing techniques. This allowed for the wide distribution of high-quality illustrated books for a growing middle-class readership. This image of the Cheshire Cat participates in a culture of nonsense, fantasy, and wordplay, which can also be found in Edward Lear, and Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It reflects, perhaps, a broader skepticism about Victorian social norms and the institutions of art, culture, and government that supported them. The cat grins down from a tree in a way that critiques the conventional hierarchies of power. By studying these books and the social history of British publishing, we can better understand the public role of art and the politics of imagery at the turn of the 20th century.