What a Horse to Bolt!. Alfred Crowquill. Wood engraving by the Dalziels. 1½ x 2¼ inches. Source: Merry Pictures by the Comic Hands of H. K. Browne, Crowquill, etc., 19. Click on image to enlarge it.

Another of Crowquill’s punning conceits, this time showing a horse that doesn’t bolt in the sense of running away, but bolting in the sense of gobbling its food. As usual, the effect is both amusing and slightly menacing, a variety of ‘nonsense’, to use the terminology of the time, that challenged the stability of everyday realities. Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Richard Doyle and all of those contributing to Punch partook of this discourse.

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]