Call Number:

Item 0044

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

1 volume (approximately 34 pages)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0093, Item 0044, British late-Victorian album with "Ally Sloper" characters and other scraps, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

approximately 1880s (inclusive)

Creator:

Creator unknown

Form:

Printed ephemera, Cartoons (humorous images), Fairy tales, Nursery rhymes, Paintings (visual works), and Juvenilia

Abstract:

This late Victorian-era scrap album, likely made by a young British boy, bears a black lacquered board cover adorned with a hand-painted bouquet of flowers, ferns, and foliage. Contents include die-cut color scraps of animals, flowers, and a color set of characters from "Ally Sloper," the popular Victorian comic strip. A set of colored transfer prints depict fables and nursery rhymes and a set of color-printed square cards depicts the Stations of the Cross.

The creator of this late-Victorian scrap album is unknown, though the content suggests that the creator was a young British boy.

Biographical information derived from collection.

This late Victorian-era scrap album, likely made by a young British boy, bears a black lacquered board cover adorned with a hand-painted bouquet of flowers, ferns, and foliage. Contents include die-cut color scraps of animals, flowers, and a color set of characters from "Ally Sloper," the popular Victorian comic strip. A set of colored transfer prints depict fables and nursery rhymes and a set of color-printed square cards depicts the Stations of the Cross.

"Ally Sloper" was the big-nosed ne'er-do-well main character in a comic strip created by Charles H. Ross that appeared in

Judy , a rival of the comic publication Punch . In the 1880s, the character was sold to Judy's publisher, who passed the creation of the strip to William G. Baxter and, later, W. Fletcher Thomas. The chromolithographic and die-cut images of the Ally Sloper characters in this album include Ally and Mrs. Sloper, their showgirl daughter Tootsie, Ally's dog Snatch, Aunt Geeser, Uncle Boffin, Cousin Evelina, and dubious companions Dook Snook, Lord Bob, the Hon. Billy, McNab, Bill Higgins, and Mr. McGooseley.

This album also includes a set of color images that appear to be made by a sort of rub-off transfer process. The multi-color images look to have been stenciled or stamped, but may have been transferred to the album pages by a dampening and rubbing transfer process. These prints include framed icon-like images with captions of Punch and Judy, Simple Simon, Little Red Riding Hood, and Tom Thumb, among other nursery rhymes and fables.