Happy Days One hundred years of Comics

Dennis Gifford

Published by Jupiter Books London, hardcover with dustjacket, illustrated.


Denis Gifford's collection of comic papers is probably the largest and most comprehensive in the world. It extends to some 20,000 issues and from these Mr Gifford has selected the most representative, the most rare and the most humourous of their style or period to portray the rise of the comic during the last one hundred years.
From the first restrained 'panels' of Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday in the 1860s, primarily aimed at an adult audience (and which may conveniently be regarded as the genesis of the modern comic), through the popular 'cuts' of the eighties and nineties whose circulation was doubled by Alfred Harmsworth when he halved the price, to a culmination (of sorts) in the 'School of Corrr !!! and Aghhh !!!' energetically promoted during the last thirty years by comics such as the Dandy and Beano.
Denis Gifford conducts us on a highly amusing tour of the highlights (and a few lowlights) of comic publishing and ably presents a concise survey of their evolution as provocative as the strips themselves.