File:1885 Punch head toss.png

"Our Three-Volume Novel at a Glance", a cartoon by Priestman Atkinson, from the Punch Almanack for 1885 (which would have been published in late 1884). This is a jocular look at some clichéd expressions which were overused in the popular literature of the time. It contains absurd literalistic interpretations of a number of conventional metaphors, accompanied by some outrageous visual puns. In the nineteenth century, popular novels often appeared in three-volume editions when first published, in order to allow three customers of commercial "circulating libraries" to be reading parts of the book simultaneously. I've abridged the second and third "volumes" of the cartoon in this scan.