"Gentlemen, the Cartoon"
For many years the Editor’s cry after Punch lunches

The first edition of Punch was published on July 17, 1841. Its founders, wood engraver Ebenezer Landells and writer Henry Mayhew, got the idea for the magazine from a satirical French paper, Charivari (indeed, the first issue was subtitled, "The London Charivari").

Landells insisted that Punch should be less bitter than other British comic publications and of a higher literary standard. The name was hit upon at an early meeting – someone remarked that the magazine should be like a good Punch mixture – nothing without Lemon (referring to Mark Lemon, the magazine’s first editor), whereupon Mayhew shouted “ A capital idea! Let us call the paper Punch!”

The magazine was set up with capital of £25… and the future soon looked bleak. The circulation refused to rise, money ran short and it began to look as if Lemon would have the same success with Punch as he did with his previous enterprise, a pub which went bankrupt.

But then he had the bright idea of publishing a big annual issue called the Almanack which sold an astonishing 90,000 copies and Punch was on the map. In the medium term, however, it continued to struggle for survival until it was taken over by the printing firm of Bradbury and Evans (which became Bradbury and Agnew in 1872).

The magazine then entered its golden age, a period in which it enjoyed great success for decades. When a magazine becomes identified with a period it very often fails to survive it. The readers of the Strand Magazine in Edwardian days, or