For other people and objects with this name, see: John Bull (disambiguation).

World War 1 recruiting poster

John Bull is a literary and cartoon character created to personify Britain by Dr. John Arbuthnot in 1712 and popularized first by British print makers and then overseas by illustrators such as American cartoonist Thomas Nast.

Bull is usually portrayed as a stout man in a tailcoat with breeches and a Union Jack waistcoat. He also wears a low topper (sometimes called a John Bull topper) on his head and is often accompanied by a bulldog. 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.

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

See also

• Marianne
• Uncle Sam
• Johnny Canuck

External reference

• Superimposed images of John Bull by cartoonists, from 1790 on.
• The British Library newspaper catalogue