My husband, Brian Maidment, who has died aged 78, enjoyed a lengthy teaching career across a range of higher education institutions, before retiring as emeritus professor in the history of print at Liverpool John Moores University.
An expert on the social history of the Georgian and Victorian eras – in particular as seen through downmarket illustrated books, prints and ephemera – among his various books were Dusty Bob: A Cultural History of Dustmen, 1780–1870, published in 2007, and Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 1820–50 (2013), which offered a survey of little-known visual humour from the late Regency period and described the inventiveness and vitality of cheap illustrated texts from that time.
