Charles Williams

Charles Williams (died 1830) was a British caricaturist, etcher and illustrator. He was chief caricaturist between 1799 and 1815 for the leading British publisher S. W. Fores. He worked in a style similar to James Gillray's. A number of his prints are, in fact, exact or near-exact copies of Gillray's such as the caricature 'More pigs than teats, or the new litter of hungry grunters, sucking John Bulls old sow to death' which also contains a criticism of Gillray in the lower margin. In his earlier works, Williams used the pseudonyms Ansell or Argus; with George Cruikshank and others he illustrated The Every-Day Book by William Hone, edited 1825–26.

Williams was the first of many who caricatured the 1st Duke of Wellington; he published a drawing of him in September 1808, during the Peninsular War, in which the Duke cuts off the pigtail of French general Jean-Andoche Junot, defeated at the Battle of Vimeiro.

Works J. Mitford The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy (1819) W. Combe Doctor Syntax in Paris, or, a Tour in Search of the Grotesque (1820) The Tour of Doctor Prosody: in Search of the Antique and Picturesque (1821) My Cousin in the Army, or, Johnny Newcome on the Peace Establishment (1822)