Punch, a weekly illustrated humor magazine, was the longest-running publication of its type in the English language. It was published from 1841 to 1992. It was revived in 1996 and published until 2002, but this later version had a different character. Famous cartoonists, including Richard Doyle, Harry Furniss, Charles Keene, David Low, Phil May, Gerald Scarfe, Ronald Searle, John Tenniel, and Bill Tidy, drew for the magazine during its long life. In addition, the contributions of many writers helped establish Punch as a leading literary magazine. These included such writers of the 1800’s as George Du Maurier, George and Weedon Grossmith, Thomas Hood, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Mark Twain and such writers of the 1900’s as John Betjeman, A. A. Milne, Anthony Powell, James Thurber, and P. G. Wodehouse.
Punch was the creation of three Londoners —Ebenezer Landells, a wood-engraver; Henry Mayhew, an author and journalist; and Mark Lemon, a playwright. The first edition of the magazine appeared on July 17, 1841, under the full title of Punch, or the London Charivari. A similar satirical French publication, called Le Charivari, had appeared in Paris since 1832. A famous drawing of the puppet character Mr. Punch by Richard Doyle was adopted for the magazine’s cover in 1849. It remained in use until 1956. Punch popularized the use of the word cartoon to refer to its humorous drawings. Before that time, cartoon had the more general meaning of preliminary sketch.
Punch quickly built up a reputation as a journal of radical satire. Lemon and Mayhew gathered a staff that included Thackeray, the author of the satirical novel Vanity Fair; Douglas Jerrold, a campaigning journalist; and the illustrators Doyle, Archibald Henning, and John Leech. Punch used humor to highlight many political and social topics of the day, such as poverty, cheap labor, and the Corn Laws . The Corn Laws taxed imports of grain . A particular target was Irish life and politics. The magazine attacked authority and mocked such public figures as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Irish leader Daniel O’Connell.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Punch became more mainstream, with a less cutting, satirical style. The magazine maintained a liberal, humorous tone. It reached its highest circulation in the late 1940’s. After that, it began to fade in popularity. The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who edited the magazine from 1953 to 1957, tried to revive its role as a leader of national opinion. But his successors, Bernard Hollowood (editor from 1957 to 1968) and William Davis (editor from 1969 to 1978), reestablished it as a mainly humorous magazine.
From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, Punch began to struggle against competition from such satirical magazines as Private Eye and Viz. Punch regained popularity under the editorship of Alan Coren (1978 to 1987), who introduced full-color cartoon covers. But in the late 1980’s, sales plunged. The magazine closed in 1992 with heavy debts. In 1996, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Fayed bought the magazine and relaunched it as a glossy, metropolitan magazine featuring political and social news. Fayed stopped publishing print editions of Punch in 2002.
