Henry Corbould

Henry Corbould spent his days tangled in the British Museum’s print rooms, ink staining his fingers and pages of Shakespeare curled in his pocket. He made his living turning old prints into fresh, witty copies—clean lines, clearer jokes, sold to the new middle class. His 1826 H Beard Print Collection, a set of thirty comic scenes, feels like a Victorian Twitter feed: one plate shows a dandy tripping over his own cane, another a maid stealing a single grape. If you like Hogarth’s bite but want it in bite-size prints you can hang in a hallway, Corbould’s your man.