Our Latest Merrie Monarch

It will take some getting used to but within just 48 hours we had a new Prime Minister and a new Sovereign to enhance our lives.  For the former, expectations could hardly be lower, but the latter, for all that he’s been part of the landscape for our entire lives, may surprise us all, though not necessarily in a good way.  This 1952 cover story dates from when he was just 4 years of age and it’s a tribute to the expertise of mid-century character analysts that so much evidence of fine qualities could be deduced from scrutiny of his infant features, though it’s notable they had nothing to say on the subject of intelligence.  It will be fascinating to see how many of these attributes will guide his conduct over the course of his reign but it’s inconceivable that he could display fewer than the new Prime Minister possesses. “Tenacity of Purpose” can be detected in disconcerting abundance, beyond that is mostly a vacuum.

 

Heath Robinson’s Merrie Monarchs

Two volumes of Monarchs of Merrie England were published in 1907. Each volume had 10 colour plates by W Heath Robinson (WHR) and humorous verses by Roland Carse.  A much abbreviated edition followed in 1910 comprising 4 card covered volumes, each with 2 colour plates. Which is what we are showing here.  WHR’s lively illustrations are full of movement and incisive drawing and form a perfect accompaniment to Carse’s rhyming couplets.  At this point in his career, WHR was mostly employed illustrating more prestigious colour-plate gift books and critical voices have overlooked Monarchs of Merrie England in favour of Bill the Minder, Twelfth Night and Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales.  Printers Thomas Forman of Nottingham extended the life of these illustrations in the form of postcards that were marketed to small traders to publicise their services.