Rodolphe Töpffer

Rodolphe Töpffer (1799 to 1846) was a Swiss teacher, writer, painter and caricaturist whose work sits between literature and the visual arts. He is best known for his illustrated books, which he called graphic literature and which are widely regarded as among the earliest European comics. The most famous of them, Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois, appeared in 1837 and reached American readers in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. Each page combined a few captioned panels, and Töpffer also wrote essays on how the form worked. Open Library lists his Nouvelles genevoises first among his works and counts well over a hundred titles under his name. He worked as a schoolmaster, and the caricatures he drew to amuse his pupils were the starting point for his picture stories.