Editing Punch (magazine) (section)

===Gaining a market and relations with other papers===
After months of financial difficulty and lack of 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]]'' and the Sunday paper ''[[News of the World]]'' 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'' shared a friendly relationship with not only ''The Times'', but also journals aimed at intellectual audiences such as the ''[[Westminster Review]]'', which published a 53-page illustrated article on ''Punch''{{'}}s first two volumes. Historian [[Richard Altick]] writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s...''Punch'' had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, [[royal family|royalty]] itself".<ref>See Altick, Richard. ''Punch: The Lively Youth of a British Institution, 1841–1851'' ([[Ohio State University Press]], 1997), 17.</ref>

[[File:True humility.png|thumb|upright=1.4|right|"True Humility": Bishop: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones"; Curate: "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!"<br /><div style="text-align: right;">[[George du Maurier]], 1895<ref>''Punch'', 9 November 1895, p. 222</ref></div>]]
Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and '50s, ''Punch'' was the success story of a [[threepence (British coin)|threepenny]] weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals. ''Punch'' enjoyed an audience including [[Elizabeth Barrett]], [[Robert Browning]], [[Thomas Carlyle]], [[Edward FitzGerald (poet)|Edward FitzGerald]], [[Charlotte Brontë]], [[Queen Victoria]], [[Albert, Prince Consort|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 by [[George du Maurier]]). Several British humour classics were first serialised in ''Punch'', such as the ''[[Diary of a Nobody]]'' and ''[[1066 and All That]]''. Towards the end of the 19th century, the artistic roster included [[Harry Furniss]], [[Linley Sambourne]], [[Francis Carruthers Gould]], and [[Phil May (caricaturist)|Phil May]].<ref name=vicweb>[http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/punch/pva44.html Punch, or the London Charivari (1841–1992) — A British Institution], Philip V. Allingham; Contributing Editor, [[Victorian Web]]; Faculty of Education, [[Lakehead University]], [[Thunder Bay, Ontario]].</ref> Among the outstanding cartoonists of the following century were [[Bernard Partridge]], [[H. M. Bateman]], [[Bernard Hollowood]] (who also edited the magazine from 1957 to 1968), Kenneth Mahood, and [[Norman Thelwell]].

Circulation broke the 100,000 mark around 1910, and peaked in 1947–1948 at 175,000 to 184,000. Sales declined steadily thereafter; ultimately, the magazine was forced to close in 2002 after 161 years of publication.<ref name="mle">John Morrish, Paul Bradshaw, ''Magazine Editing: In Print and Online''. Routledge, 2012. {{ISBN|1136642072}} (p. ƒƒ32).</ref>

''Punch'' was widely emulated worldwide and was popular throughout the [[British Empire]]. The experience of Britons in British colonies, especially in India, influenced ''Punch'' and its iconography. Tenniel's ''Punch'' cartoons of the 1857 [[Indian Rebellion of 1857|Sepoy Mutiny]] led to a surge in the magazine's popularity. India was frequently caricatured in ''Punch'' and was an important source of knowledge on [[Indian subcontinent|the subcontinent]] for British readers.<ref>Ritu G. Khanduri. [http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/authors/246935 Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World]. 2014. Cambridge University Press</ref>