stories and poems incorporating the first letter into a fanciful design. Between 1867 and 1874 Sambourne contributed 350 initial letters. Although Sambourne's distinctive style emerged only slowly, he became a regular staff member of Punch in 1871. At the beginning he made his name by his "social" drawings while continuing to provide his highly elaborated initial letters. He drew his first political cartoon, properly so-called, in 1884, and ten years later began regularly to design the weekly second cartoon. At the end of John Tenniel's long occupancy in 1901, he became the magazine's chief principal cartoonist. Unusually for an artist working in black and white, Sambourne used a huge library of photographic images to give accuracy to his work, which was characterized by a vivid and decisive linearity as well as an artistic inventiveness that took his images far beyond the simple concept of a cartoon or "comic cut". The quality of his work for Punch was acknowledged by the Royal Academy, which exhibited his drawings over a 20-year period. Other works While his work for Punch occupied most of his energy, it was not Sambourne's only source of income, as he would often accept commissions for individuals, books, magazines and advertisements. These include:Book illustrations Military Men I have met ..., Edward Dyne Fenton, 1872 Our Autumn Holiday on French Rivers ..., James Lynam Molly, 1874 Our Holiday in the Scottish Highlands, Arthur à Beckett, 1876 The Royal Umbrella. [A tale.] ..., Alfred Frederick Pollock Harcourt, 1879 The Modern Arabian Nights, Arthur a' Beckett, 1877 Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, 1881 The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley, 1885 Sherryana, F. W. Cosens, 1886 Friends and Foes from Fairy Land, Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1886 The Green Above The Red: More Blarney Ballads, Charles L. Graves, 1889 The Real Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, F. C. Burnand, 1893DiplomaInternational Fisheries Exhibition Diploma, 1883–84, referred to by the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, as "of its kind one of the most extraordinary things in English art".Invitations Invitation to the Lord Mayor's Banquet, 1888Advertisements Apenta aperient water Philip Morris cigarettes, 1889 Rose's lime juice Mazawatte tea Lancashire RailwayCovers The Naval and Military Gazette The Pall Mall Gazette The Sketch The SphereIllustrations''' Black and White, 1891 The British Workman The Illustrated London News The Piccadilly Magazine The Pictorial World Examples of his work Examples from his series of caricatures in Punch 1881–82, "Punch's Fancy Portraits": More of Sambourne's caricatures from