Richard Doyle

Career Doyle's first published illustrations appeared in The Eglinton Tournament (1840), a humour book set in the Middle Ages, which met with commercial success.

Following this success Doyle illustrated a string of fantasy titles: The Enchanted Doll by Mark Lemon (1849), The Story of Jack and the Giants

He also wrote for Punch a series of articles entitled Manners and Customes of ye Englyshe. In 1844, Doyle designed the cover of Punch's sixth issue. It became the basis of the magazine's masthead until 1954, and was based on Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne". Such amateurism hampered Doyle's success. Several books he had been commissioned to illustrate did not appear because he lacked the application needed to finish them, and completed work was often uneven in quality and 'deplorably pedestrian'.

Doyle signed many of his drawings with the depiction of a small bird standing on the initials 'RD', a reference to his nickname "Dickie" (as in "dickie bird").

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