Our Antediluvian Ancestors by Opper, Frederick, Burr - 1903

London: C Arthur Pearson Ltd, 1903. First UK Edition . Hardback without dust wrapper. . Good Reading Copy . Large 4to (29cm x 22cm) Red cloth on board, gilt titles and decoration. Some sunning and discoloration to spine and boards; considerable rubbing and bumping to edges and corners; binding fairly slack but holding together, closed tears to 4 pages; Gift inscription in pencil on front endpaper; endpapers foxed. Frontispiece and two other pages have been scribbled on. Frederick Burr Opper (1857-1937) was a pioneering American cartoonist. creator of the ''Happy Hooligan'', ""Alphonse & Gaston'', and ""Maud the Mule"", and illustrator of Bill Nye's ''Comic History of the US'', Mr Dooley's Philosophy'' and various other books. ''The Antediluvians'' first appeared in Hearst's New York Journal on Sunday, January 20, 1901. The action took place in and around the community of Cliffville, which seems to have had as large and diverse a population as any modern town. In fact, the general theme of the single-panel feature was that people hadn't really changed in all the years since — men still compare their wives' brontosaurus stew (or the equivalent) to that of their mothers, and parents still hope for prospective sons-in-law to have a good stash of skins and arrowheads (or the equivalent). There weren't any regular characters, but names such as Flintspear and Skinclad recurred frequently, as in ""Mrs Stonehatchet"" or the ""Bonescraper family"". At the time, it wasn't yet the custom for the Sunday comics to appear on a reliable, weekly schedule, and Our Antediluvian Ancestors was about as sporadic as the rest. But it was popular enough to be reprinted in book form in 1903. " "50 full page cartoons, each with text caption on opposite page. " .