The Shops

Abstract

This chapter reconciles the supposedly widespread and egalitarian phenomenon of print-shop window scenes with the realities of making and selling satirical prints. It takes James Gillray’s vision of Hannah Humphrey’s premises as a stereotype whose relationship to contemporary reality is questionable, in particular because this vision marginalises the primary function as places of commerce of those shops that displayed satirical prints in their windows. Nonetheless, this stereotype was an emblem that made good business sense for contemporaries to associate with from time to time. How and the extent to which this was done was, I argue, an individual choice, shaped by how these proprietors saw their business within the commercial and environmental contexts of their day and by the wares they chose to sell.