Recovering a Lost Fandom: Rodolphe Töpffer’s Early Anglophone Readers

The Genevan artist Rodolphe Töpffer (1799–­1846) has become the forgotten “father” of many possible “firsts” in comics history: the first graphic novelist, the first comic strip artist, and even the first comics theorist. He began publishing his hand-­drawn narratives—­what he dubbed littérature en estampes—­in the 1830s and ‘40s, but he arguably became internationally successful through French-and English-­language piracies. Widely circulated piracies, as well as subsequent authorized legitimate international reproductions, were not necessarily attached to his person, nor protected by then nascent (national and international) copyright law. Relying on digitized newspaper archives, this article reconstructs where and how Töpffer’s works were marketed to English-­speaking audiences and considers how everyday Anglophone readers first responded to his innovative albums or remembered them in the early twentieth century, after his works were largely eclipsed by American comic strips. Ultimately, newspaper evidence provides traces of his readership and a lost Töpfferian fandom.