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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MR PUNCH JOINS THE
SATIRE SET

Malcolm Muggeridge was appointed editor in 1953, and immediately set about giving Punch a sharper and more topical edge, dropping the traditional cover in 1956. Colour became more important, and the best graphic artists of the age – Hoffnung, Brockbank, Quentin Blake, Hewison, and the influential French artist Andre Francois – competed to be published. Ronald Searle’s work brought a more savage edge to Punch illustration, and by the early Sixties – at the height of the satire boom – Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman were emerging as bold new talents.

THELWELL	HEWISON	TROG

page 6

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