The England and Wales in this series was originally conceived by James Gillray and published by Hannah Humphrey in 1791, the accompanying Scotland and Ireland were designed by Robert Dighton in 1793 and published by Bowles and Carver. The initial quarto engravings were popular and soon followed by reductions in 1808. The England and Wales offered here bears at the bottom a general advertisement for the series. Below this in all three cards are manuscript notations stating 'Very Scarce & valuable', 'Very Scarce indeed', etc. This is the same hand as on the verso of each card which state 'These three cards Given to me by Mr George Crowther of Hebden Bridge 1916 L.T.' . One of the most famous cartographic caricaturist was only recently identified as Lillian Lancaster. As a girl she provided the drawings for William Harvey's 'Geographical Fun' who used the pseudonym Aleph. In his introduction he writes how the maps were drawn by a fifteen year old girl for the amusement of her sick brother, this was Lillian Lancaster. Born Eliza Jane Lancaster in 1852 in London she went on to the stage as a pantomime artist, comedy actress and singer. The idea apparently came from an earlier drawing of England represented by Punch riding on a dolphin. Their intent was not just entertainment but also educational as the introduction states ‘no history no journal can be understood without acknowledge of maps, and good services is done when we make such information more easy and agreeable’. In 1884 she married William Edward Tennant, a London tutor and landed proprietor. William died at the young age of 43 in 1897 and Lillian subsequently retired to Brighton, where she would seem to have returned to designing and producing humorous manuscript caricature maps. It is possibly no coincidence that her married initials became L.T. as inscribed here on these caricatures. Provenance: private English collection. Barron http://barronmaps.com/lilian-lancaster-1852-1939/; Slowther, Catherine ‘The Map Collector’ no. 16 pp. 48-50; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).