Description
Like Punch, the journal published satiric verse and parodies, as well as political and literary criticism, sports and travel information. These were often illustrated or accompanied by topical cartoons (often of a political nature). The Punch mascot, Mr. Punch and his dog Toby were lampooned by Fun's jester, Mr. Fun, and his cat. The magazine was aimed at a well educated readership interested in politics, literature, and theatre.
Fun was sold for a penny and was sometimes characterised as a 'poor man's Punch'. Thackeray called it "Funch". Fun silenced its critics by publishing lively fare, whereas Punch was criticised as dull and tired. One area in which Fun clearly bested its rival was in its close connection to popular theatre.
Byron and his successor as editor, Tom Hood, the son of the first Punch contributor, assembled a vivacious, bohemian and progressive staff. Notable contributors included playwrights Tom Robertson, Hood, Clement Scott, F. C. Burnand (who defected to Punch in 1862), satirist Ambrose Bierce, G. R. Sims and especially W. S. Gilbert, whose Bab Ballads were almost all published in its pages, among other articles, poems, illustrations and drama criticism over a ten-year period. Cartoonists included Arthur Boyd Houghton, Matt Morgan and James Francis Sullivan (1852–1936). The Fun gang frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch 'Round table'. Even though Fun was seen as liberal in comparison with the increasingly conservative Punch, it could cast satirical scorn or praise on either side of the political spectrum. For instance, Disraeli, whose unorthodox character and ethnic lineage made him a popular focus of attack, was praised in the magazine, including for his Reform Bill of 1867.
Read more about this topic: Fun (magazine)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)