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Three hardbound volumes in burgundy cloth covered boards with gilt detailing to the spine and front board, illustrated throughout. Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. At its founding it was jointly edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon. Initially it was subtitled The London Charivari, this being a reference to a satirical humour magazine published in France under the title Le Charivari. Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that "punch is nothing without lemon". After months of financial difficulty and a relative lack of initial market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against the satirical press of the time. The Times used small pieces from Punch as column fillers, giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of respectability, a privilege not enjoyed by any other comic publication. Punch would share a friendly relationship with not only The Times but also journals aimed at intellectual audiences such as the Westminster Review, which published a fifty-three page illustrated article on Punch's first two volumes. Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and 1850s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals of its time. Punch enjoyed an audience on both sides of the Atlantic, including: Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte Brontė, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell. Punch gave several phrases to the English language, including The Crystal Palace, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895 cartoon). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch, such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That. In a red cloth binding with gilt decoration to spine and front board. Blind stamped border and decoration to front and rear board. Externally generally smart with rubbing to the extremities and joints. Bumping to head and tail of spines, with a small loss to heads of spines. Damp staining to rear board of 1925 volume. Hinges slight strained but firm. Internally generally firmly bound. Pages generally clean and bright with the occasional handling mark and some age toning. Offsetting to front free-endpaper. Small ink stain to the fore-edge of the 1925 volume. Good.
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