A Teenage Girl Turned Europe's Countries into Cartoon Characters in 1868
Geographical Fun: Being Humourous Outlines of Various Countries (1868)
In the 1860s, London publisher Hodder and Stoughton released Geographical Fun, a series of anthropomorphic maps that recast European nations as whimsical figures: England as Queen Victoria, Scotland as a piper, Russia as a bear, each paired with a witty quatrain. The introduction credits a mysterious "Aleph," London surgeon William Harvey, yet Harvey's own text insists the sketches came from a fifteen-year-old girl who began drawing them to amuse her sick brother.
The young lady who is responsible for these Sketches is now in her fifteenth year, and her first idea of Map Drawing is traceable to her meeting with a small figure of Punch riding on a Dolphin, and contrived to represent England.