Page:English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the nineteenth century.djvu/459

 among his intimate friends were men of mark; such as Leigh Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, Charles Dickens, W. M. Thackeray, Clarkson Stanfield, David Roberts, and the Landseers; he did as much for illustrative art as, perhaps, any artist of his time; and yet, amongst men whose abilities scarcely exceeded his own in the same particular walk in art, no place is to be found in any biographical dictionary, so far at least as we know, for any mention of poor, kindly, genial, Kenny Meadows.

Besides the popular illustrated periodicals of his day, in most of which his familiar initials may be recognised, Kenny Meadows was in almost universal request both amongst authors and publishers of the time. We find him in 1832 illustrating, with Isaac Robert Cruikshank, a periodical bearing the somewhat unpromising title of "The Devil in London." To an 1833 edition of "Gil Blas," illustrated by George Cruikshank, he contributed a frontispiece; and we find his hand in the following: the late J. B. Buckstone's dramas of "The Wreck Ashore," "Victorine," "May Queen," "Henriette," "Rural Felicity," "Pet of the Petticoats," "Married Life," "The Rake and his Pupil," "The Christening," "Isabella," "Second Thoughts," and "The Scholar" (1835, 1836); Whitehead's "Autobiography of Jack Ketch" (1835); "Heads of the People, or Portraits of the English" (1841); Mr. S. C. Hall's "Book of British Ballads" (1842-44); an 1842 edition of Moore's "Lalla Rookh"; Leigh Hunt's "Palfrey, a Love Story of Old Times" (1842); "The Illuminated Magazine" (1843); Shakespeare (1843); "Whist, its History and Practice"; "Backgammon, its History and Practice," by the same author; "The Illustrated London Almanacks" (from 1845 upwards); Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer's "Leila," and "Calderon" (1847); W. N. Bailey's "Illustrated Musical Annual," "The Family Joe Miller, a Drawing-room Jest Book" (1848); "Puck," (a comic serial, 1848); Laman Blanchard's "Sketches from Life" (1849); Samuel Lover's " Metrical Tales and Poems;" "The Magic of Kindness," by the brothers Mayhew; Mrs. S. C. Hall's "Midsummer Eve;" "Punch," up to and including the seventh volume; and (some time afterwards) its able opponent "The Man in the