Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer

Rodolphe Töpffer of Geneva (1799 to 1846) had many careers at once. He was a schoolmaster, a university professor, a polemical journalist, an art critic, a landscape draughtsman and a writer of fiction, travel tales and social criticism. The publisher's description credits him with inventing a new art form, the comic strip, which he called the picture story and which is the ancestor of today's graphic novel.

David Kunzle's book looks at that invention and the man behind it. According to the catalogue, Töpffer was reluctant at first to publish what he called his little follies, and when he did, they quickly caught on.

The book will interest readers curious about where comics began, and students of the graphic novel.

Edition note: published by University Press of Mississippi. ISBN-13 9781578069477.