The first chapter defines what was meant by ’caricature’ in Britain between the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century. I explain how the varied usage of ’caricature’ captured the richness of caricatúra’s connotations and etymology in Italian, discussing Giuseppe Baretti’s Italian–English Dictionary, Annibale Carracci’s ’perverse realism’ and the history of ritratti carichi and caricature drawing in Britain. I establish the full scope of carticature’s significance for literature and letters in the Romantic period, extricating the history of literature’s ’caricature’ from the ’golden age of caricature’ associated with the single-sheet satirical print genre. Extracts from the novels of Mary Brunton and Maria Edgeworth illustrate the literary sphere’s view of satirical prints, while quotations from books newspapers and periodicals exemplify the use and debate of ’caricature’ as a term in social and political critique as well as in criticism of literature and the arts.