Twelve portraits are given in this collection of figures: the second features a woman and two children, while the rest are individual portraits. The members of the dinner party, many portrayed holding wine glasses or utensils, are displayed with dialogue. Heads of the Table (1845), printed in George Cruikshank’s Table Book, suggests a change in the artist’s thinking regarding the appropriate way to read the head. Here reading occurs not by means of phrenological maps, but through written dialogue attached to the portrait of each speaker.

As a monthly periodical eventually bound into a single book, George Cruikshank’s Table Bookboth participated in and subverted the early Victorian fashion of sentimental comic almanacs (Patten, vol. 2). Cruikshank’s wood engravings and more detailed steel engravings blurred the line between the “real” and the “imaginary” and stressed the “connection between surveillance and commodification” of London society (Patten 2: 207). Here an emphasis is placed on "reading"  heads—not as phrenological maps, but as records of voiced language attached to the portrait of each speaker.

At the height of their popularity from 1820 to 1850, periodicals and almanacs provided their audience with an inexpensive collection of visual and literary art that reflected topics of political and social interest. George Cruikshank's Table Book was reported as filling "the decided vacancy" of "a loud laugh" among Britain's monthly periodicals ("Review" 52).