This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (May 2010)

This article's introduction section may not adequately summarize its contents. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (May 2010)

Cover of the first Punch or The London Charivari depicts Punch hanging a caricatured Devil, 1841 (see gallery below for enlarged detail)

Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire 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.

History

Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew 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 as Le Charivari. 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; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch 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" 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 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, 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 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, 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 itself".^[2]

Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals. Punch enjoyed an audience including: Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte Brontí«, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. Punch gave several phrases to the English language, including The Crystal Palace, 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   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 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, 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 (Punch of Punch and Judy) 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.

Contributors

Editorial meeting of Punch magazine in the late 19th century

Editors of Punch were:

• Mark Lemon (1841-1870)
• Henry Mayhew (1841-1842)
• Charles William Shirley Brooks (1870-1874)
• Tom Taylor (1874-1880)
• Sir Francis Burnand (1880-1906)
• Sir Owen Seaman (1906-1932)
• E.V. Knox (1932-1949)
• Kenneth Bird (1949-1952)
• Malcolm Muggeridge (1953-1957)
• Bernard Hollowood (1958-1968)
• William Davis (1969-1977)
• Alan Coren (1978-1987)
• David Taylor (editor) (1988)
• David Thomas (editor) (1989-1992)
• Peter McKay (journalist) (September 1996-1997)
• Paul Spike (1997)
• James Steen (1997-2001)
• Richard Brass (2001-2002)

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

Cartoonists who worked for the magazine included:

• Acanthus (Frank Hoar)
• Anton (Antonia Yeoman)
• Edward Ardizzone
• Nicolas Bentley
• Murray Ball
• Quentin Blake
• Russell Brockbank
• Clive Collins
• Richard Doyle (who also illustrated Charles Dickens' Christmas books)
• Rowland Emett
• ffolkes (Michael Davies)
• Fougasse (Kenneth Bird)
• Alex Graham (creator of Fred Basset)
• J.B. Handelsman
• Leslie Illingworth
• John Jensen
• Charles Keene
• David Langdon
• Larry (Terrence Parkes)
• John Leech
• George du Maurier
• Phil May
• Brooke McEldowney
• Nick Newman
• Bernard Partridge
• Pont (Graham Laidler)
• Matt Pritchett [1]
• Arthur Rackham
• Edward Linley Sambourne
• Gerald Scarfe
• Ronald Searle
• E.H. Shepard (who also illustrated Winnie-the-Pooh)
• Robert Sherriffs
• William Sillince
• George Sprod
• John Tenniel (who also illustrated Alice in Wonderland)
• Norman Thelwell
• Bill Tidy (who attempted to buy Punch when it went out of publication)
• Trog (Wally Fawkes)
• E A Worthington
• Albert Rusling

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.

Influence

Punch gave its name to the Lucknow-based satirical Urdu weekly Awadh Punch (1877-1936), which in turn inspired dozens of other "Punch" periodicals in India.

University of Pennsylvania humor magazine The Pennsylvania Punch Bowl derived its name from this magazine.

See also

• Dropping the Pilot - 1890 Punch cartoon

Notes

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Punch magazine

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Punch (magazine)

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Punch

• Punch cartoon library, including a history of the magazine
• Gallery of Punch cartoons at Punchcartoons.com
• British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent
• List of issues available on-line from Project Gutenberg
• Works by "Mr. Punch" at Project Gutenberg
• The History of "Punch" by Marion H. Spielmann, 1895, from Project Gutenberg
• John Leech Sketch archives from Punch, website with 600 of Leech's sketches
• Punch. v.10-11, 1846
• Punch. v.76, 1879