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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 with a bowler hat and Union Jack waistcoat, 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 but 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.
John Bull was also one of the names of a series of British periodicals.
External reference
John Bull (around 1562 - March
12, 1628) was an English composer. He was
a virtuoso keyboard player, and most of his music was written
for the keyboard.
John Bull was the name of a man who served on the American Continental Congress for South Georgia.
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