Everything about Punch Magazine totally explained
Punch was a
British weekly
magazine of
humour and
satire published from
1841 to
1992 and from
1996 to
2002.
History
Punch was founded on
July 17 1841 by
Henry Mayhew and engraver
Ebenezer Landells. At its founding 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 under the title
Le Charivari. Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove
puppet,
Mr. Punch; 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 modern use of the word '
cartoon' to refer to 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.
After months of financial difficulty and a relative lack of initial 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 also 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 of its time.
Punch enjoyed an audience on both sides of the Atlantic, including:
Elizabeth Barrett,
Robert Browning,
Thomas Carlyle,
Edward FitzGerald,
Charlotte Brontë,
Queen Victoria,
Prince Albert,
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Emily Dickinson,
Herman Melville,
Henry 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 when it reached 175,000, but slowly declined over the years, until the magazine was forced to close in
1992 after 150 years of publication.
Gallery of selected early covers
Image:Punch volume 1 cover (1841).png|The first cover shows Punch hanging the Devil
Image:Punch magazine cover 1843 july 1 fifth volume no 103.png|1843: July 1 cover shows Punch straddling a trumpeter
Image:Punch.jpg|Punch magazine cover from 1867 shows Richard Doyle's 1849 illustration
Image:Punch magazine cover 1916 april 26 volume 150 no 3903.png|1916: April 26 cover shows Richard Doyle's masthead with colour and advertisements
1996 resurrection
In early
1996, the Egyptian businessman
Mohamed 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 at the time quoted a total loss to its owner of some £16 million (about $28 million U.S.) over the six years of publication, with only 6,000 subscribers at the end.
Whereas the earlier version of
Punch had prominently featured the clownish character
Punchinello (a.k.a. Punch of
Punch and Judy) performing various antics on each issue's front cover (in a manner later copied by
Mad magazine's character
Alfred E. Neuman), the resurrected
Punch magazine didn't use this character at all, but prominently 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 sold to the
British Library
.
Contributors
Editors of
Punch were:
Cartoonists who worked for the magazine include
Richard Doyle,
John Leech,
Charles Keene,
John Tenniel,
Edward Linley Sambourne,
George du Maurier,
Bernard Partridge,
Phil May,
Arthur Rackham,
William Sillince,
E.H. Shepard,
E A Worthington,
Rowland Emett,
Graham Laidler (Pont),
Norman Thelwell,
Leslie Illingworth,
Arthur Watts,
Kenneth Bird (Fougasse),
Robert Sherriffs,
Nicolas Bentley,
Frank Hoar (as 'Acanthus'),
George Sprod,
Antonia Yeoman (Anton),
Edward Ardizzone,
Michael ffolkes,
Russell Brockbank,
Ronald Searle,
J.B. Handelsman,
Gerald Scarfe,
Wally Fawkes (Trog),
David Langdon, Alex Graham (creator of
Fred Basset),
John Jensen,
Quentin Blake,
Murray Ball,
Matt Pritchett,
David Myers.
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, Dominic Midgley, Jon Paul Morgan, Pete Sawyer,
Peter Dickinson.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Punch Magazine'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://punch__magazine.totallyexplained.com">Punch (magazine) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
