Punch.co.uk

Welcome to the website of Punch magazine and Punch Cartoon Library, the world’s best and largest repository of cartoon art available for licensing.

Punch, the magazine of humour and satire, ran from 1841 until its closure in 2002. A very British institution with an international reputation for its witty and irreverent take on the world, it published the work of some of the greatest comic writers (Thackeray, P G Wodehouse and P J O’Rourke among others) and gave us the cartoon as we know it today. Its political cartoons swayed governments while its social cartoons captured life in the 19th and 20th centuries. The world’s finest cartoonists appeared in Punch: such great names as Tenniel, E H Shepard, Fougasse, and Pont.

History of the Cartoon

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THE VICTORIAN AGE
(1841-1900)

The first edition of Punch appeared just four years after Queen Victoria came to the throne, and in the middle of what passed in those days for election fever. Its humour was robust. ‘Why is Punch like the current government?’ boasted the magazine’s advertisements. ‘Because it will be out soon.’ Early Punch illustration was restricted by technical problems of producing the magazine – artists drew straight on to a wooden block which was then carved by an engraver. The artist depended on the skill of the engraver. Perhaps because of this, the most successful artists – Leech, Doyle and Keene – were those who had trained as engravers and understood their techniques.

JOHN LEECH	CHARLES KEENE	RICHARD DOYLE

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