15 Facts About John Bull

John Bull is a national personification of the United Kingdom in general and England in particular, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic works.

John Bull is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged, country-dwelling, jolly and matter-of-fact man.

John Bull originated in satirical works of the early 18th century and would come to stand for "English liberty" in opposition to revolutionaries.

John Bull was popular through the 18th and 19th centuries until the time of the first world war, when he generally stopped being seen as representative of the "common man".

John Bull originated as a satirical character created by John Arbuthnot, a friend of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.

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John Bull first appeared in 1712 in Arbuthnot's pamphlet Law is a Bottomless Pit.

John Bull was almost always depicted in a buff-coloured waistcoat and a simple frock coat .

John Bull Arbuthnot provided him with a sister named Peg, and a traditional adversary in Louis Baboon .

John Bull is usually depicted as a stout man in a tailcoat with light-coloured breeches and a top hat which, by its shallow crown, indicates its middle class identity.

John Bull has been used in a variety of different ad campaigns over the years, and is a common sight in British editorial cartoons of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

John Bull excels in humour more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay; melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear or surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment and has no turn for light pleasantry.

Cartoon image of stolid, stocky, conservative and well-meaning John Bull, dressed like an English country squire, sometimes explicitly contrasted with the conventionalised scrawny, French revolutionary sans-culottes Jacobin, was developed from about 1790 by British satirical artists James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank.

Increasingly through the early twentieth century, John Bull became seen as not particularly representative of "the common man, " and during the First World War this function was largely taken over by the figure of Tommy Atkins.

Consequently, John Bull was replaced by Sidney Strube's suburban Little Man as the personification of the nation.

John Bull is the only Englishman that seems to have traversed these regions, as man, simply, not as John Bull.