Steadman, Ralph
Entry updated 9 March 2026. Tagged: Artist.
(1936- ) Welsh illustrator, painter and author, in Wales from infancy, active from around 1955, whose immediately recognizable, savagely surrealized, explicitly gonzo caricatures and illustrations have illuminated his collaborative work with figures like Hunter S Thompson (1937-2005) – whose autofiction Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas (11 November 1971 Rolling Stone; 1972) was their most famous shared Satire on America – and Will Self. At its most scarifying, his work, whose ultimate effect is unmistakably recognizable in its own right, incorporates the counter-cultural iconology of 1960s Underground Comics, scatological Satire typical of Weimar artists like George Grosz (1893-1959), and savagely pointed examples of the exquisite corpse "game" played by 1920s Surrealists: a technique where seemingly random drawings on prefolded paper convey, on being opened out, a harlequin slating of the world. His widely influence on J G Ballard (and Ballard's on him) is indeed manifest. Of other authors' books he has illustrated, Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (graph 1972) and George Orwell's Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (graph 1995) perhaps stand out.
Steadman's own illuminated tales are few in number. Cherrywood Cannon (1978), set in a neverwhere Dystopia ruled by a mad dictator – "He was the ugliest, most hateful ruler in living memory – and the people worshipped him." – who has had built the eponymous super Weapon to honour his vanity; when fired, it explodes the land into dust. Even more savagely, in The Big I Am (graph 1988) God excoriates his creations.
Comparisons have been drawn with exact contemporaries James Gillray (1756-1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827). It may be that the only contemporary satirist who stands comparison with Steadman is his own exact contemporary Gerald Scarfe (1936- ); both are similarly adroit, both are deeply transgressive. Of more recent political caricaturists, Martin Rowson is perhaps the most fruitfully influenced. [JC]
Ralph Idris Steadman
born Wallasey, Cheshire: 15 May 1936
works (highly selected)
- Cherrywood Cannon (London: Paddington, 1978) [graph: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Sigmund Freud (London: Pavilion, 1979) [nonfiction: graph: Sigmund Freud: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- The Scar Strangled Banger (London: Harrap, 1987) [nonfiction: graph: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- The Big I Am (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988) [graph: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Gonzo: the Art (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998) [nonfiction: graph: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
works
works illustrated by Steadman (highly selected)
- Mischa Damjan. Two Cats in America (London: Longman Young Books, 1972) [graph: trans of an original version not located: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland (London: Dennis Dobson, 1967) [graph: illustrated version of the 1865 original: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972) [graph: illustrated version of the 1872 original: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Lewis Carroll. The Complete Alice and the Hunting of the Snark (London: Bloomsbury, 1986) [graph: omni of the above two plus a portfolio (1975): illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- George Orwell. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (London: Secker and Warburg, 1995) [graph: illustrated version of the 1945 original: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Will Self. Psychogeography (London: Bloomsbury, 2007) [graph: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
- Will Self. Walking to Hollywood (London: Bloomsbury, 2010) [graph: illus/hb/Ralph Steadman]
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