Introduction

There are many dates we could use to start the history of the US graphic novel, but I have chosen 14 September 1842, when The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck was reprinted in New York by Wilson & Company, a translated, pirated version of a long comics narrative by Rodolphe Töpffer that first appeared in French. It was republished, again without paying fealty to copyright, in 1849. The writer and illustrator was a Genevan educator whose importance to comics history is encapsulated in the title of historian David Kunzle’s book Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer (2007). The prolific Töpffer wrote essays, reviews, and short novels, but is primarily remembered for his eight books of ‘longish (serio-) comic strip stories’; Töpffer’s earliest manuscript for these narratives is dated to 1827, though the first to be published – Histoire de Monsieur Jabot – was in 1833. Originally in French, these were soon translated into German, Dutch, and English, and they came with the seal of approval from the eminent German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who saw them in 1831, when he offered commendation and encouragement: from the outset, book-format comics were in dialogue with esteemed literary culture. Töpffer described his ‘invention’ as a ‘histoire en estampes (story in prints, picture story)’ but a critic in 1846 observed ‘he draws novels’. In the 1830s Töpffer wrote that each of his books was ‘a kind of novel, all the more unique in that it is no more like a novel than it is like anything else’.

Töpffer’s popularity spurred a generation of European imitators. Parisian publisher Maison Aubert sold unauthorised editions of Töpffer’s books from 1837 onwards, also publishing nine original albums known as ‘les Jabots’, drawn by artists such as Cham (Amédée de Noé) and Gustave Doré. The latter’s L’histoire pittoresque, dramatique et caricaturale de la Sainte Russie en caricatures (1854) was his ‘last and most ambitious novel in prints’. In England, long-form comics from the period included illustrator George Cruikshank’s The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman (1839) and Mr. Lambkin (1844) and Alfred Crowquill’s (Alfred Henry Forrester) Pantomime: To Be Played As It Was, Is, and Will Be, at Home (1849).