The Punch Historical Archive, 1841–1992: A Sustainable Brand for the Digital Age

Punch is one of the most enduring symbols of the Victorian age. It surpassed other Victorian weekly satirical magazines in popularity due in part to its awareness of the importance of branding. This extended beyond the weekly magazine to include almanacks, seasonal supplements, pocket books, and volume editions of popular serials. These additional publications provided supplemental income that ensured the magazine’s continued survival. Punch’s sustainability as a brand continues today with the release of the beta site for the Punch Historical Archive, 1841–1992; an enhanced edition, complete with author attributions and improved metadata, is scheduled for release in April 2015. This site, produced by Cengage Learning, is the most complete online collection of Punch available, in part due to the fact that it incorporates both regular issues and seasonal supplements.¹

First published in 1841, Punch entered into a vibrant and competitive market for popular periodicals. Outliving many of its contemporaries, it endured until the end of the twentieth century. Punch is a particularly rich source for studying mid-Victorian life and urban change, with its full-page main cuts providing striking visual representations of current news and events. Its enduring importance is confirmed by the fact that for decades scholars have used full-page cartoons from Punch in a wide variety of scholarly publications. However, the main cuts are only a small percentage of the total contents of the magazine. By taking these images out of context, scholars have overlooked important recurrent motifs and tropes in the magazine as a whole. Drawing on a wide variety of popular interests, Punch developed a form and style that was accessible to a broad spectrum of readers. Imitating its predecessors, Punch married its textual content to visual representations by emphasizing shared motifs and emblems. Textual and visual metaphors produced a common language through which readers could begin to imagine and debate social and cultural change. Knowing how this textual/visual relationship evolved is crucial for understanding Punch’s enduring popularity. The launch of the Punch Historical Archive provides a unique opportunity to examine the satirical narratives that remain comparatively unstudied but were central to Punch’s success. By investigating this archive using keyword searches, students and scholars will be able to study the text and language of Punch in depth rather than just focusing on its fabulous cartoons.

Punch was initially started as a private venture between Henry Mayhew, Mark Lemon, Joseph Stirling Coyne, Ebenezer Landells, and Joseph Last. However, as with many of its predecessors, it soon found itself in financial difficulties. Competition drove a wedge between the five men as they disputed who would have controlling power of the magazine. As a result, Punch was initially a rather fractured organisation. Although Mark Lemon wrote short plays to finance the magazine, after a few months it was clear that it needed other sources of revenue. Consequently, at the close of 1841, the Punch Almanack for 1842 was introduced as a supplementary number. The sale of the additional number boosted the magazine’s circulation figures significantly and became a permanent offering every Christmas. All of these almanacks are available for the first time in searchable form as part of the Punch Historical Archive. The availability of these materials will no doubt inspire exciting new research on the popularity and appeal of supplementary publications.

The astrologer’s almanack was one of the most popular types of advertising in the eighteenth century, a genre that would have been familiar to readers of Punch. In the 1842 Punch almanacks, the traditional dated format was replaced by a more dominant visual iconography associated with the weekly magazine, thus drawing on cultural reference points the reader would have immediately recognised. Such intertextual references added to the rich complexity of the magazine, and the repetition of form and symbol enhanced the reader’s experience of the text. This was especially true for regular readers; it is more difficult to chart the experience of the occasional reader. As a supplement to the magazine, the Punch almanacks are vital resources for investigating the traditions...