ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Frederick Harrison, 'L & NWR'

Leslie Ward · Published 18 January 1894, Vanity Fair (London)

Frederick Harrison, 'L & NWR'
Leslie Ward ('Spy') renders Frederick Harrison, general manager of the London and North Western Railway, as a solid, self-possessed figure in a dark three-piece suit, hands thrust in pockets, a pince-nez dangling from his nose and a watch-chain looped across a well-fed waistcoat. The caption simply reads *L & NWR* — the railway does the naming for him. Ward flatters the build while gently mocking the institutional gravitas: Harrison looks less like a visionary than a man who runs things efficiently and knows it. The caricature appeared as *Men of the Day No. 577*, positioning railway management as fit company for generals and politicians in Vanity Fair's ongoing portrait of Victorian power.

Leslie Ward Public domain