Punch, or The London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. It became a British institution, but in Ireland Punch is known for its racist depictions of the Irish, while in the 1850s it declared that the Irish people were 'the missing link between the gorilla and the Negro'.
After the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002.
History
Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25. It was jointly edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon. Initially it was subtitled The London Charivari in homage to Charles Philipon's earlier French satirical humour magazine 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. The magazine initially struggled for readers, except for an 1842 "Almanack" issue which shocked its creators by selling 90,000 copies. In December 1842 due to financial difficulties the magazine was sold to Bradbury and Evans, both printers and publishers. Bradbury and Evans capitalised on newly evolving mass printing technologies and also were the publishers for Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
The term "cartoon" to refer to comic drawings was first used in Punch in 1843; the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with murals, and "cartoons" for the mural were displayed for the public; the term "cartoon" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard, or cartone in Italian. Punch humorously appropriated the term to refer to its political cartoons, and the popularity of the Punch cartoons led to the term's widespread use.
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. Artists who published in Punch during the 1840s and 50s included John Leech, Richard Doyle, John Tenniel and Charles Keene. This group became known as "The Punch Brotherhood", which also included Charles Dickens who joined Bradbury and Evans after leaving Chapman and Hall in 1843. Punch authors and artists also contributed to another Bradbury and Evans literary magazine called Once A Week (est.1859), created in response to Dickens' departure from Household Words.
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.
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 and the Sunday paper News of the World 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".
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 Brontë, 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. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss, Linley Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould, and Phil May. Among the outstanding cartoonists of the following century were Bernard Partridge, H. M. Bateman, Bernard Hollowood who also edited the magazine from 1957 to 1968, and Norman Thelwell.
Circulation broke the 100,000 mark around 1910, and peaked in 1947-48 at 175,000 to 184,000. Sales declined steadily thereafter; ultimately, the magazine was forced to close in 1992 after 150 years of publication.
Punch was widely emulated worldwide and popular in the colonies. However, the colonial experience, especially in India, also had an impact on Punch and its iconography. Tenniels' Punch cartoons of the 1857 Sepoy Munitny, also called India's First War of Independence, led to a surge in the magazine's popularity. Colonial India was time and again caricatured in Punch and can be seen as a significant source for producing knowledge about India (Khanduri 2014).
Punch and depictions of the Irish
The magazine is most remembered in Ireland for its racist depictions of the Irish, as apes or monkeys. While Punch generally represented a widespread British view of the Irish, it also attracted criticism from other establishment media in Britain. The Spectator in 1870, for instance, had this to say about one such simian portrayal of the Irish: 'Punch,â€" which with its pictorial genius wields more power to hurt than any mere newspaper, â€" is always unscrupulous about Ireland. Its cartoon this week, painting the typical Irishman in the character of Caliban, makes the type hardly distinguishable from the gorilla. These are the kinds of insults which no race ever yet forgave."
Later years
Punch material was collected in book formats from the late nineteenth century, which included 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 â€" 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.
Punch magazine ceased publishing in 1992.
In early 1996, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the rights to the name, and Punch 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 was acquired by the British Library, including the famous Punch table. The long oval Victorian table was used for staff meetings and other occasions, and was brought into the offices sometime around 1855. The wooden surface is scarred with the carved initials of the magazine's longtime writers, artists and editors, as well as six invited "strangers" including James Thurber and Prince Charles. Mark Twain declined the offer, saying that the already-carved initials of William Makepeace Thackeray included his own.
Gallery of selected early covers
Contributors
Editors
- Mark Lemon (1841â€"1870)
- Henry Mayhew (1841â€"1842)
- Charles William Shirley Brooks (1870â€"1874)
- Tom Taylor (1874â€"1880)
- Sir Francis Burnand (1880â€"1906)
- Sir Owen Seaman (1906â€"1932)
- E.V. Knox (1932â€"1949)
- Kenneth Bird (1949â€"1952)
- Malcolm Muggeridge (1953â€"1957)
- Bernard Hollowood (1958â€"1968)
- William Davis (1969â€"1977)
- Alan Coren (1978â€"1987)
- David Taylor (1988)
- David Thomas (1989â€"1992)
- Peter McKay (September 1996 â€" 1997)
- Paul Spike (1997)
- James Steen (1997â€"2001)
- Richard Brass (2001â€"2002)
Cartoonists
- Acanthus (Frank Hoar)
- George Adamson
- Anton (Antonia Yeoman)
- Edward Ardizzone
- C. H. Bennett
- Nicolas Bentley
- Murray Ball
- Quentin Blake
- Russell Brockbank
- Eric Burgin
- Clive Collins
- Richard Doyle (who also illustrated Charles Dickens' Christmas books)
- Rowland Emett
- Noel Ford
- ffolkes (Michael Davies)
- Fougasse (Kenneth Bird)
- André François
- Alex Graham (creator of Fred Basset)
- J.B. Handelsman
- Michael Heath
- William Hewison
- Martin Honeysett
- Leslie Gilbert Illingworth
- Ionicus
- John Jensen
- Charles Keene
- David Langdon
- Larry (Terrence Parkes)
- John Leech
- Raymond Lowry
- George du Maurier
- Kenneth Mahood
- Phil May
- Brooke McEldowney
- Rod McKie
- Ed McLachlan
- Benjamin Minns.
- George Morrow (illustrator)
- Nick Newman
- Bernard Partridge
- Matt Percival
- John Phillips
- Pont (Graham Laidler)
- Matt Pritchett
- Arthur Rackham
- Arthur Wallis Mills
- Roy Raymonde
- Leonard Raven-Hill
- Albert Rusling
- 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)
- F. H. Townsend
- George Denholm Armour
Authors
Influence
- Punch gave its name to the Lucknow-based satirical Urdu weekly Awadh Punch (1877â€"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.
- Australia's Melbourne Punch was inspired by the London original.
- Charles Wirgman's Japan Punch (1862 - 1865, 1865 - 1887) was based on Punch and went on to inspire elements of modern manga.
Punch along with founder Henry Mayhew were included in Terry Pratchett non-Discworld novel Dodger
See also
- Works originally published in Punch magazine
Notes
Works cited
External links
- "Punch, or, The London Charivari, 1841". Science in the 19th Century Periodical. Retrieved September 29, 2013 from http://www.sciper.org/browse/PU_desc.html
- Works by or about Punch magazine at Internet Archive
- Punch at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
- List of Punch volumes currently online
- Hathi Trust. Punch, fulltext
- The History of "Punch" by Marion H. Spielmann, 1895, from Project Gutenberg
- Punch cartoon library, Official website of Punch Limited
- British Cartoon Archive at University of Kent
- John Leech Sketch archives from Punch, website with 600 of Leech's sketches
- Beauty's Lisping Parasite, a Punch article decoded.
- Ariadne In Naxos, a Punch cartoon analyzed.
- Searchable archive
- [3]
- [4]
- [5]
- [6]