Punch, or the LONDON CHARIVARI, the English comic journal par excellence, is a weekly magazine of wit, humour, and satire in prose and verse, copiously illustrated by sketches, caricatures, and emblematical devices. It draws its materials as freely from the most exalted spheres of foreign politics as from the provincial nursery; and, dealing with every side of life, is not less observant of the follies of Belgravian than of the peculiarities of Whitechapel. Punch gives due place to Irish bulls and dry Scotch humour, and does its best to present them in the raciest vernacular. Stern in the exposure of sham and vice, Punch is yet kindly when it makes merry over innocent foibles. Usually a censor morum in the guise of Joe Miller, a genial English Democritus who laughs and provokes to laughter, Punch at times weeps with those that weep, and, jocis remotis, pays a poetical tribute to the memory of the departed great. The wittiest of serial prints was founded in 1841, the first number appearing on the 17th July of that year, and, under the joint editorship of Henry Mayhew and Mark Lemon, soon became a household word, while ere long its satirical cuts and witty rhymes were admittedly a power in the land. Punch is recognised as an English institution, and in corners of Europe where an Englishman rarely comes the frequenters of the café may be seen puzzling over the esoteric wit and wisdom of Cockayne. Their contributions to Punch helped to make Douglas Jerrold, Gilbert Æ Beckett, Tom Hood, Albert Smith, Thackeray, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, and F. C. Burnand famous; as their illustrations did H. K. Browne, Doyle, Leech, Tennyson, Du Maurier, Keene, Linley Sambourne, and Furniss. It should be noted that this genial comic paper has done memorable service in purifying the moral standard of current wit in England.
See CHARIVARI, CARICATURE, the articles on the chief contributors, &c.; A Journal of Punch, by Athol Mayhew, rather unduly magnifying Mayhew's share (1895); and The History of Punch, by M. H. Spielmann (1895).