Early American political cartoons

[George Thompson]

I have long surmised that the texts incorporated in early cartoons might be
a source for documenting slang, proverbs, &c.  The American Antiquarian
Society has announced that they have finished digitizing the appr. 600
cartoons in their collection, all before 1876.

http://pastispresent.org/2013/curatorscorner/digitization-of-the-political-cartoon-collection/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed

The words in the incorporated text are not searchable, but nonetheless, it
is a chance for someone else to test that surmise.

A note on the power of the hyphen:
The note from the AAS opens "AAS holds a comprehensive collection of
political cartoons produced in the United States between 1764 and 1876.
The separately published American cartoon collection holds over 600
examples of caricatures, satires, and political subjects. . . ."  My first
reading of this, indeed, my first several readings of it,was that the cartoon
collection was the subject of a separately published book.  How much
puzzlement would have been saved by the artful placement of a few hyphens: "The
separately-published-American-cartoon collection. . . ."   Indeed, just "
separately-published" would have done the trick, but I like to be lavish
with my hyphens.

Rereading this, I notice that when the title of this feature ("Curators'
Corner") in incorporated into a web address, it raises a nice problem with
visual juncture: "curatorscorner".

GAT (who never scorns curators, even if they are sparing with hyphens).

--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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