These remarkable engravings, spanning five centuries of British history, vividly reflect the national mood illuminating opinion and propaganda with their myths, fantasies and slogans. They include the work of the masters - Hollar, Hogarth, Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank - as well as many hundreds of minor and unknown artists.

The microfilm edition brings together a huge collection of some 17,400 prints, the earliest dated 1320, the majority concentrated in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. The prints are arranged in the same chronological order as in the great twelve volume Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, edited by F.G. Stephens and M.D. George. Each print is described at length in the catalogue which is also reproduced on microfilm.