Marie Duval

Marie Duvalis a celebration of the art and times of Marie Duval (active 1869-1885) - a unique, pioneering and highly entertaining visual journalist, cartoonist and illustrator whose work appeared in serial magazines and books at a time when the identity of the artist, in Victorian England, was in radical flux. Both a stage actress as well as an artist, Duval was uniquely placed to take advantage of the first appearance of a mass leisure culture by contributing to the weekly magazines that combined current affairs and theatrics with a focus on urban life. Duval would have been excluded from the places in which the penny papers were conceived by male journalists - public house back rooms, for example - but the forging of new professions allowed her to make her way. The book provides an entertaining visual account of the work of Duval as she struggled and succeeded in creating a new urban visual culture. It will look in turn at key aspects of Victorian mass leisure industry, such as tourism, day-tripping, fashion, the theatre, art and the 'season.' Placing Duval in the visual context of the emerging profession of visual journalism, this illustrated book offers an enticing glimpse of the exciting, strange and world-changing media environment of London in the last part of the nineteenth century.

Dr Simon Grennan is research fellow at the University of Chester, a performance artist as part of the international duo Grennan & Sperandio and author of the graphic novelDispossession. His colleague at University of Chester is lecturerDr Julian Waite, who is a performer and visual artist specialising in street theatre.Professor Roger Sabinis Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts, Central Saint Martins, and the author of many books about comics. They have collaborated as a team on the Marie Duval Archive, a partnership project of Chester University, Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London and Guildhall Library.