'Up Against The Thing; Comic Espionage & Double Acts on the British Stage & Page

Abstract

British satirical graphic tradition. Special reference to the British playwright Joe Orton( 1933-67). Defiled books in Islington Public Library, London.

The British satirical graphic tradition is a rich and glorious one. This essay will search out some significant motives and subject them to a broad sweep of social histories from the Nineteenth Century to the present day. Much attention focuses on the life and times of the British playwright Joe Orton (1933-1967). Orton lived amidst an extraordinary time in British social history and much groundbreaking graphic and performed comedy resulted through the reshaping of the popularly known phenomena known as the 'Permissive Society'. Hailed in the popular press as the 'Oscar Wilde of the Welfare State', Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell raised the stakes of graphic satire with a series of well-rehearsed and subversive interactive strikes on the book stock held at the Islington public library in London. Their 'defiled' library books, as they could be termed, are not only a testimony to an age of artistic and sexual liberation, but also paved the way for a greater appreciation of the Artists Book and art that is altered and collaborated, and not necessarily solely created!