The impact of visual propaganda: George Reynolds, George Cruikshank and the case of the temperance progress

Henry Miller

This paper evaluates the impact of a specific genre of visual propaganda: the temperance progresses of the 1840s. It borrows insights from the history of the book, and focuses on questions of audience, consumption, reader and critical reception, influence, and commercial success, as well as the content of the image(s). It is suggested this might be a more profitable way of analysing the impact of the visual than the intensive, interpretative strategies which have normally been deployed. The temperance progresses told a Hogarthian narrative in a series of plates, beginning with an individual’s temptation by drink. This inevitably led to poverty, immorality, crime, familial suffering, and a grim finale. The best known example is George Cruikshank’s the Bottle, but this was preceded by many others, including the plates issued by George Reynolds to boost the circulation of his periodical the Teetotaler. Temperance progresses aimed to convert working men to teetotalism through the power of the image, but also to make money by reaching a large general audience. They were an extremely ambitious form of visual propaganda. Sales of the progresses were disappointing and reviewers were lukewarm. Given its ambition it is not surprising that the temperance progress fell short of its aims. The progresses were enthusiastically welcomed by the temperance movement however, who used them to instruct the young. The commercial failure and the limitations of the temperance progress as a genre meant it would never again be used to appeal to a general audience, although it enjoyed a long afterlife in temperance culture.