On 24th June 1843 Punch magazine invented the 'cartoon'.
The word cartoon was used by the magazine in warning the government of its forthcoming lampoon of the exhibition of cartoons (in the older sense of the word – as full size drawings created as a study for future development) concerned with the decoration of Pugin and Barry 's sumptuous new Houses of Parliament.
The magazine, a satirival publication launched in 1841, published the works of great comic writers and poets such as W.M. Thackeray, Mayhew, P.G. Wodehouse, Sir John Betjeman, Alan Coren and Hunter Davies, amongst others.
Its political and social cartoons swayed governments, capturing life in detail from the 19th and 20th centuries. The finest cartoonists appeared in Punch – legends like Tenniel, Du Maurier, Shepard, Pont, Illingworth, Fougasse, R.S. Sherriffs, Trog and Searle.
After some years of decline publication stopped in 1992 until, in early 1996, the rights to the name Punch were acquired.
Who was it what bought the rights to Punch in 1996?
FInd out here...
It was high-class grocer Mohamed Al-Fayed, and the magazine was re-launched later that year. It was reported that the magazine was intended to be a spoiler aimed at Private Eye, which had published many items critical of Fayed. The magazine never became profitable, and at the end of May 2002 it was announced that Punch would once more cease publication.
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