Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (Latin: umor, "body fluid"), control human health and emotion and satire Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. Punch material was also collected in book formats from the late nineteenth century, including Pick of the Punch annuals with cartoons and text features, Punch and the War (a 1941 collection of WWII-related cartoons), and A Big Bowl of Punch – which was republished a number of times. Many Punch cartoonists of the late 20th century published collections of their own, partly based on Punch contributions.

Contents

History

Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew Henry Mayhew was an English social researcher, journalist, playwright and advocate of reform. He was one of the two founders (1841) of the satirical and humorous magazine Punch, and the magazine's joint-editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days. He is better known, however, for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of and engraver Ebenezer Landells. It was jointly edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon. Initially it was subtitled The London Charivari, this being a reference to a satirical humour magazine published in France France is a founding member state of the European Union and is the largest one by area. France has been a major power for several centuries with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and in the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America; during the 19th and early 20th as Le Charivari Le Charivari was an illustrated newspaper published in Paris, France from 1832 to 1937. Le Charivari published caricatures, political cartoons and reviews. In 1835 the government banned political caricature, thus Le Charivari began publishing satires of everyday life. Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy Punch and Judy is a traditional, popular puppet show featuring the characters of Punch and his wife Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically the anarchic Punch and one other character. The show is traditionally performed by a single puppeteer, known since; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch Punch is a general term for any of a wide assortment of mixed drinks, either soft or alcoholic, often rum, generally containing fruit or fruit juice. The drink was brought from India to England in the early seventeenth century, and from there it was introduced into other countries. Punch is typically served at parties in large, wide bowls, known is nothing without lemon". Mayhew ceased to be joint editor in 1842 and became "suggestor in chief" until he severed his connection in 1845. Punch was responsible for the word sense "cartoon The word cartoon has various meanings, based on several very different forms of visual art and illustration. The artists who draw cartoons are known as cartoonists" as a comic drawing. The illustrator Archibald Henning designed the cover of the magazine's first issues. The cover design varied in the early years, though Richard Doyle designed what became the magazine's masthead Masthead is a list, usually found on the editorial page of a newspaper or magazine, of the members of the newspaper's editorial board. If no editorial board exists, the masthead will often feature a list of top news staff members. Some mastheads also include information such as the publication's founding date, slogan, logo and contact information in 1849.

In the 1860s and 1870s, conservative Punch faced competition from upstart liberal journal Fun, but after about 1874, Fun's fortunes faded. At Evans's café in London, the two journals had "Round tables" in competition with each other.[1]

"True Humility": Bishop: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones"; Curate: "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!" George du Maurier George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British author and cartoonist, originally published in 1895

After months of financial difficulty and lack of market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against the satirical press of the time. The Times The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International. News International is entirely owned by the News Corporation group, headed by Rupert Murdoch. Though traditionally a moderately centre-right newspaper and a supporter of the Conservatives, it supported the Labour Party in used small pieces from Punch as column fillers, giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of respectability, a privilege not enjoyed by any other comic publication. Punch would share a friendly relationship with not only The Times but journals aimed at intellectual audiences such as the Westminster Review The Westminster Review was founded in 1823 by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill as a quarterly journal for philosophical radicals, and was published from 1824 to 1914, which published a fifty-three page illustrated article on Punch's first two volumes. Historian Richard Altick writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s...Punch had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, royalty A royal family is the extended family of a king or queen regnant. The term imperial family appropriately describes the extended family of an emperor or empress, while the terms "ducal family", "grand ducal family" or "princely family" are more appropriate to describe the relatives of a reigning duke, grand duke, or itself".[2]

Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny The threepence or thrupenny bit was a denomination of currency used by various jurisdictions in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, until decimalisation of the pound sterling and Irish pound in 1971. It was also used in some parts of the British Empire , notably Australia, New Zealand and South Africa weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals. Punch enjoyed an audience including: Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets, Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator, Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë ) (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels are English literature standards. Under the pen name Currer Bell, she wrote Jane Eyre, Queen Victoria Victoria was the Queen regnant of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India of the British Raj from 1 May 1876, until her death. Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and 7 months, longer than that of any other British monarch before or since, and her reign is the longest of any female, Prince Albert Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the husband of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid-1800s. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house, Herman Melville Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet, whose work is often classified as part of the genre of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American educator and poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five Fireside Poets, and James Russell Lowell James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets. These poets usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families. Punch gave several phrases to the English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via, including The Crystal Palace The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895 cartoon). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch, such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That.

Circulation peaked during the 1940s at 175,000 and declined thereafter, until the magazine was forced to close in 1992 after 150 years of publication.

Gallery of selected early covers

detail of Punch hanging the Devil from first cover in 1841
1843: 1 July cover shows Punch straddling a trumpeter The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a
Punch magazine cover from 1867 shows Richard Doyle's 1849 illustration
1916: 26 April cover shows Richard Doyle's masthead with colour and advertisements

1996 resurrection

In early 1996, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed (born January 27, 1929) is an Egyptian businessman estimated to be worth £900 Million[citation needed]. Amongst his business interests is ownership of Harrods department store in Knightsbridge and the English Premiership football team Fulham Football Club. He relaunched the humour publication Punch in 1996 but it folded bought the rights to the name, and it was re-launched later that year. It was reported that the magazine was intended to be a spoiler aimed at Private Eye Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, currently edited by Ian Hislop. Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic of public figures deemed incompetent, inefficient or corrupt, and has become a self-styled "thorn in the side" of the British establishment, though it, which had published many items critical of Fayed. The magazine never became profitable in its new incarnation, and at the end of May 2002 it was announced that Punch would once more cease publication. Press reports quoted a loss of £16 million over the six years of publication, with only 6,000 subscribers at the end.

Whereas the earlier version of Punch prominently featured the clownish character Punchinello Pulcinella, Italian pronunciation: [pultʃin'ɛl:a]; often called Punch or Punchinello in English, Polichinelle in French, is a classical character that originated in the commedia dell'arte of the 17th century and became a stock character in Neapolitan puppetry (Punch of Punch and Judy Punch and Judy is a traditional, popular puppet show featuring the characters of Punch and his wife Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically the anarchic Punch and one other character. The show is traditionally performed by a single puppeteer, known since) performing antics on front covers, the resurrected Punch magazine did not use this character, but featured on its weekly covers a photograph of a boxing glove, thus informing its readers that the new magazine intended its name to mean "punch" in the sense of a punch in the eye.

In 2004, much of the archive, including the famous Punch table, was acquired by the British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is one of the world's major research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, patents, databases,.

Contributors

Editorial meeting of Punch magazine in the late 19th century

Editors of Punch were:

John Tenniel's "Our New 'First Lord' at Sea" for the 13 October 1877 issue

Cartoonists who worked for the magazine included:

Notable authors who contributed at one time or another include Kingsley Amis, Alex Atkinson, John Betjeman, Willard R. Espy, A.P. Herbert, Thomas Hood, Douglas William Jerrold (1841–1857), James Leavey, George du Maurier, George Melly, John McCrae, A.A. Milne, Anthony Powell, W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, William Makepeace Thackeray, Sir Henry Lucy, John Hollingshead, Artemus Ward, Somerset Maugham, P.G. Wodehouse, Keith Waterhouse, Quentin Crisp, Olivia Manning, Sylvia Plath, Joyce Grenfell, E.M. Delafield, Stevie Smith, Virginia Graham, Joan Bakewell, Penelope Fitzgerald, Peter Dickinson.

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