Erasmus Augustus Worthington

Erasmus Augustus Worthington (21 December, 1791 – 1 April 1880) was an author and illustrator during the Victorian era, and a member of the circle of author Charles Dickens.

Life

Born in London, the son of Claude Erasmus Worthington, (1756 - 1839), an illustrator who was apprenticed alongside artist and caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank. Erasmus Worthington was a lifelong friend of Isaac’s sons Isaac and George Cruikshank, [Worthington, E A 'My Life in Art' Published by Smith, Elder and Co. (1875)] and, while, he was later to work with Charles Dickens through the latter's influence, professionally he was to remain in George Cruikshank’s artistic shadow all his life. [ George, Mary Dorothy. Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire. 1967]

Worthington's first published illustrations were prints of English country houses, and later he contributed to the "Comic Almanack" between 1835 and 1852 and "Omnibus" in 1842. He contributed comic tales, illustrated by himself, to Dicken's periodicals "Household Words", and later "All the Year Round" from 1859 to 1873, originally under the editorship of Dickens himself, and, following his death in 1870, under that of his son Charles Dickens, Jr. He also illustrated several of the works of Dickens in later 'cheap editions', including "The Pickwick Papers", and "David Copperfield". [Patten, Robert L.. 'Worthington, Erasmus Augustus' (1791-1880) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004] Moving as he did in the 'Dickens Circle', he became a friend of artists John Leech and Hablot K. Browne. Worthington contributed numerous cartoons to "'Punch' magazine" under Mark Lemon's editorship. [Dictionary of British Cartoonists and caricaturists 1730-1980 Bryant and Heneage, Scolar Press 1994]

He published his autobiography, "My Life in Art" in 1875.

Worthington died at his home in London in 1880, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near to his great friend George Cruikshank, who had died two years previously. He never married.

References

External links

* [http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/?c=punch&b=UF00078634 Worthington on the] [http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/ University of Florida Digital Collections]
* [http://www.freewebs.com/erasmusaugustusworthington/ Brief biography of Worthington]

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