Punch

This book is the first to explore, systematically and in depth, the first ten years of Punch, the popular Victorian periodical, especially as it mirrored the interests and mind-set of its predominantly middle-class audience. Richard D. Altick shows how Punch's editorial and pictorial contents drew from numerous streams of popular and middlebrow culture, which it blended into a distinctive weekly product, often imitated but never equaled. At every point, Altick describes Punch's humorous treatment of events, public personalities, and current issues - frivolous or serious - against a background of historical evidence culled from the London Times and other contemporary documents. Punch was quoted in Parliament and courts of law and appreciatively referred to in the letters and conversations of an extraordinary number of readers, headed by Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort and including Thomas Carlyle, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Charlotte Bronte, Edward FitzGerald, Leigh Hunt, and William Macready. American fans of Punch included Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Henry James. No other periodical, least of all a humorous one, caught the fancy of so many who left a record of their reading. Furthermore, Punch helped to establish several important careers. William Makepeace Thackeray made his reputation as a prolific contributor before he became known as the author of Vanity Fair. John Leech and Richard Doyle, the top comic artists of the early Victorian period, were Punch staffers. Altick not only presents the success story of a great humorous periodical of considerable import in English history. His pages also reflect the social history of an especially colorful and animated decade. Based on years of research, this fully illustrated volume is a monumental work of significant scholarship. Beautifully written with erudition and wit, this book will delight students of early Victorian social and political history and literature, as well as those interested in the history of journalism, graphic satire, and popular taste.