image creditPrintmaker James Caulfield spent much of his career publishing illustrated books about 'remarkable persons'. More than forty years after his death, this collection of biographies, produced in collaboration with Henry Wilson, was republished in 1869.
The vignettes, accompanied by engravings of each individual, describe a wide-ranging group - from the man who died aged 152 to a 'remarkable glutton' to a woman who lived on the smell of flowers - their only common factor being that they were in some way 'wonderful'.
The Book of Wonderful Characters: Memoirs and Anecdotes of Remarkable and Eccentric Persons in all Ages and Countries by Henry Wilson and James Caulfield.
(via Everlasting Blort)
