[Caricature map of Europe]

ROSE, F.W.
Angling in Troubled Waters. A Serio-Comic Map of Europe by Fred. W. Rose Author of the 'Octopus' Map of Europe. London: G.W.Bacon, 1899. Coloured chromolithograph. Sheet 485 x 690mm. This example laid on board as originally issued. Tear repaired.
A caricature map of Europe with each country depicted as an angler having various levels of success in hooking colonies: John Bull has a huge catch-bag (Ireland), with Egypt as a crocodile on the end of his line; France is a scuffle for control of the Third Republic between the military and civilian, their rod with an empty hook, with Napoleon's shade looking on from Corsica; Spain is watching sadly as their former catch (fish marked Cuba, Porto Rico and Phillippines) is being dragged away on the lines of an unseen U.S.A.; Belgium has the Congo; the Austro-Hungarians are mourning the assassination of Empress Elisabeth by an anarchist; Turkey has a hook in 'the Cretan spike fish', and a stain on his trousers is a skull marked 'Armenia'; Greece has pricked a finger trying to catch the spike fish by hand; larger than all others is Russia, shown as Nicholas II with an olive branch in one hand and a line stretching to the Far East in the other. This kind of 'curiosity map' is very much sought after by map collectors. HILL: Cartographical Curiosities, 57; MCC 1: Geographical Oddities, no 82, a later state.
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