A Note on H.T. Webster

I grew up with a book of H. T. Webster's cartoons in the house — part of the family library. This comes to mind thanks to a 1923 work I have just seen reproduced on-line, which shows a cartoonist of the year 2023 with his cartoon-inventing machine beside him.

I still admire Webster's work greatly. Such cartoons as this one are trotted out, these days, as extraordinary for their time. Part of my effort in writing Toys in the Age of Wonder was to emphasize that rather than being extraordinary, such works as this one were typical for their time.

"Characteristic" might be a better word-choice, for what I tried to say. I used "typical" in my writing, though, as I recall.

To view such works as extraordinarily far-sighted may seem appropriate; and yet it is, in a way, condescending. The far-sightedness was part of the texture of the times. Webster was so good because he was so firmly expressive of his times.

Cheers . . .