James Gillray (1756-1815) was England's leading caricaturist. Based on his work, Christina Oberstebrink arrives at a new understanding of the genre of caricature. With its innovative approach, her book makes a significant contribution to the study of caricature and the dissolution of classical art theory in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In the English 18th century, a new genre in art emerged: political and social pictorial satire. Its heyday coincided with the founding of the Royal Academy and the attempt to impose academic standards on English art. The works of James Gillray, a former student of the Academy, were disparagingly described as 'caricatures' yet were collected assiduously. Contemporaries regarded Gillray's work as, on one hand, flippant, tasteless, uneducated, low, and simple-minded, and on the other, sublime, original, and imaginative. These disparate interpretations of criticism only become understandable through the reconstruction of the theoretical foundations of caricature. Christina Oberstebrink approaches the subject by attempting to understand the genre of caricature and its principles from the literary genre of satire in the Aristotelian tradition. This approach leads to astonishingly revealing results. James Gillray, English caricaturist and etcher, is famous for his unyielding criticism of politics and domestic decadence. Among his favorite targets were the English royal family and Napoleon. This richly illustrated volume therefore offers a multitude of illuminating insights not only for art historians but, above all, for historians who, in the age of the visual turn, are looking for substantial stimuli for understanding the pictorial dimension of history.