This book demonstrates that since the 1970s, British feminist cartoons and comics have played an important part in the Women's Movement in Britain. A key component of this has been humour. This aspect of feminist history in Britain has not previously been documented. The book questions why and how British feminists have used humour in comics form to present serious political messages. It also interrogates what the implications have been for the development of feminist cartoons and for the popularisation of feminism in Britain. The work responds to recent North American feminist comics scholarship that concentrates on North American autobiographical comics of trauma by women. This book highlights the relevance of humour and provides a comparative British perspective. The time frame is 1970 to 2019, chosen as representative of a significant historical period for the development of feminist cartoon and comics activity and of feminist theory and practice. Research methods include archival data collection, complemented by interviews with selected cartoonists. Visual and textual analysis of specific examples draws on literature from humour theory, comics studies and feminist theory. Examples are also considered as responses to the economic, social and political contexts in which they were produced.

This book demonstrates that since the 1970s, British feminist cartoons and comics have played an important part in the Women's Movement in Britain. A key component of this has been humour. This aspect of feminist history in Britain has not previously been documented. The book questions why and how British feminists have used humour in comics form to present serious political messages. It also interrogates what the implications have been for the development of feminist cartoons and for the popularisation of feminism in Britain. The work responds to recent North American feminist comics scholarship that concentrates on North American autobiographical comics of trauma by women. This book highlights the relevance of humour and provides a comparative British perspective. The time frame is 1970 to 2019, chosen as representative of a significant historical period for the development of feminist cartoon and comics activity and of feminist theory and practice. Research methods include archival data collection, complemented by interviews with selected cartoonists. Visual and textual analysis of specific examples draws on literature from humour theory, comics studies and feminist theory. Examples are also considered as responses to the economic, social and political contexts in which they were produced.

For many years, the world of cartoons and comics was seen as a male preserve. The reality is that women have been drawing and publishing cartoons for longer than most people realise. In the early 1760s, Mary Darly illustrated, wrote and published the first book on caricature drawing published in England, A Book of Caricaturas. In the nineteenth century, Britain's first comic character, Ally Sloper, was developed by the actress and cartoonist Marie Duval (1847-1890). Cartoons were used by the suffragettes, and, during the Great War, artists such as Flora White and Agnes Richardson produced light-hearted propaganda comic postcards.; From the 1920s, a few women cartoonists began to appear regularly in newspapers. The practice was for artists to sign with their surname, so most readers were unaware of the cartoonist's gender. In 1920, Mary Tourtel created Rupert Bear for the Daily Express, and nearly a hundred years later her character is still going strong. From the 1960s, feminism inspired cartoonists to question the roles assigned to them and address subjects such as patriarchy, equal rights, sexuality and child rearing, previously unseen in cartoons. Over the last thirty years, women have come increasingly to the fore in comics, zines and particularly graphic novels; This wide-ranging curation of women's comics work includes prints, caricatures, joke, editorial and strip cartoons, postcards, comics, zines, graphic novels and digital comics, covering all genres and topics. It addresses inclusion of art by women of underrepresented backgrounds. Based on an exhibition of the same name, held at the Cartoon Museum in 2017, this book demonstrates that women have always had a wicked sense of humour and a perceptive view of the world.