Puck (magazine)

{{Infobox magazine

| title = Puck

| image_file = Puck cover2.jpg

| image_size = 250px

| image_alt = border

| image_caption = Cover of Puck (April 6, 1901): Columbia wearing a warship bearing the words "World Power" as her "Easter bonnet"

| total_circulation =

| circulation_year =

| frequency = Weekly

| language = German
English

| category = Humor

| company =

| editor = Henry Cuyler Bunner (1877–1896)
Harry Leon Wilson (1896–1902)
Joseph Keppler Jr. (1902–onward)

| editor_title = Editor

| editor2 =

| editor_title2 =

| publisher = William Randolph Hearst (1916–1918)

| firstdate = German-language edition ({{start date and age|1876}})
English-language edition ({{start date and age|1877}})

| lastdate = {{end date and age|1918|09|05}}

| founder = Joseph Keppler

| country = United States

| based = St. Louis, later New York City

| website =

| issn =

}}

File:070914puck2gpm.jpg in Manhattan, New York City|alt=The Puck Building|thumb]]

Puck was the first successful humor magazine in the United States of colorful cartoons, caricatures and political satire of the issues of the day. It was founded in 1876 as a German-language publication by Joseph Keppler, an Austrian immigrant cartoonist.{{Cite web|url=https://www.senate.gov/art-artifacts/historical-images/political-cartoons-caricatures/puck-intro.htm|title=U.S. Senate: Puck|website=www.senate.gov|access-date=August 10, 2022}} Puck's first English-language edition was published in 1877, covering issues like New York City's Tammany Hall, presidential politics, and social issues of the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

"Puckish" means "childishly mischievous". This led Shakespeare's Puck character (from A Midsummer Night's Dream) to be recast as a charming near-naked boy and used as the title of the magazine. Puck was the first magazine to carry illustrated advertising and the first to successfully adopt full-color lithography printing for a weekly publication.{{Cite web|last=Dueben|first=Alex|date=September 10, 2014|title=Puck Magazine and the Birth of Modern Political Cartooning|url=https://www.vulture.com/2014/09/puck-magazine-and-the-birth-of-modern-political-cartooning.html|access-date=May 21, 2021|website=Vulture|language=en-us}}

Puck was published from 1876 until 1918.{{Cite web|url=https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Reading-and-Writing/Puck-Magazine.aspx|title=TR Center – Puck Magazine|website=www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org|language=en|access-date=November 27, 2018}}

Publication history

After working with Leslie's Illustrated Weekly in New York – a well-established magazine at the time – Keppler created a satirical magazine called Puck,. The weekly magazine was founded by Keppler in St. Louis, Missouri. Keppler had begun publishing German-language periodicals in 1869, though they failed. In 1871,{{cite news|author=Jeremy Glass|title=5 Defunct Magazines that Changed America|url=https://www.thrillist.com/vice/spy-life-magazine-and-puck-defunct-magazines-you-should-ve-read|access-date=May 1, 2016|work=Thrillist|date=November 24, 2014}} he attempted another cartoon weekly, Puck, which lasted until August 1872.{{Cite DAB|title=Keppler, Joseph|author=Catherine Palmer Mitchell|volume=V, Part 2|pages=352–3}} Then in 1876, he again began publishing Puck in German. Interested backers wanted Puck in English so he published it in both languages for 15 years until he ceased the German version.

In 1877, after gaining wide support for an English version of Puck, Keppler published its first issue in English. The first English edition was 16 pages long and was sold for 16 cents.

Sometime before 1887, Puck moved its editorial offices from St. Louis to New York City.

In May 1893, Puck Press published A Selection of Cartoons from Puck by Joseph Keppler (1877–1892) featuring 56 cartoons chosen by Keppler as his best work. Also during 1893, Keppler temporarily moved to Chicago and published a smaller-format, 12-page version of Puck from the Chicago World's Fair grounds. Shortly thereafter, Joseph Keppler died, and Henry Cuyler Bunner, editor of Puck since 1877 continued the magazine until his own death in 1896. Harry Leon Wilson replaced Bunner and remained editor until he resigned in 1902.{{cite web |url=http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf796nb2hn;query=;style=oac4;view=admin |title= Guide to the Harry Leon Wilson Papers, ca. 1879–1939 |publisher=Bancroft Library |access-date= April 8, 2010 |location= Berkeley, CA}} Joseph Keppler Jr. then became the editor.

The English-language magazine continued in operation for more than 40 years under several owners and editors, until it was bought by the William Randolph Hearst company in 1916 (ironically, one 1906 cartoon mocked Hearst's bid for Congress with his newspapers' cartoon characters). The Hearst conglomerate discontinued the political material and switched to fine art and social fads. Within 2 years, subscriptions fell off and Hearst stopped publication; the final edition was distributed on September 5, 1918.

=London edition=

A London edition of Puck was published between January 1889 and June 1890. Among contributors was the English cartoonist and political satirist Tom Merry.{{cite book |author= Simon Houfe |title= Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists 1800–1914 |url= https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofbrit00houf |url-access= registration |year= 1978|publisher= Antique Collectors' Club |isbn= 9780902028739 }}{{Full citation needed |date= May 2014}}

Content

The magazine consisted of 16 pages measuring 10 inches by 13.5 inches with front and back covers in color and a color double-page centerfold. The cover always quoted Puck saying, "What fools these mortals be!" The jaunty symbol of Puck is conceived as a putto in a top hat who admires himself in a hand-mirror. He appears not only on the magazine covers but over the entrance to the Puck Building in New York's Nolita neighborhood, where the magazine was published, as well.

Puck gained notoriety for its witty, humorous cartoons and was the first to publish weekly cartoons using chromolithography in place of wood engraving, offering three cartoons instead of one. In its early years of publication, Puck's cartoons were largely printed in black and white, though later editions featured colorful, eye-catching lithographic prints in vivid color. A typical 32-page issue contained a full-color political cartoon on the front cover and a color non-political cartoon or comic strip on the back cover. There was always a double-page color centerfold, usually on a political topic. There were numerous black-and-white cartoons used to illustrate humorous anecdotes. A page of editorials commented on the issues of the day, and the last few pages were devoted to advertisements.

File:The Raven-Harrison&Blaine.jpg at his desk wearing his grandfather's hat which is too big for his head, suggesting that he is not fit for the presidency. Atop a bust of William Henry Harrison, a raven with the head of Secretary of State James G. Blaine gawks down at the President, a reference to the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem "The Raven". Blaine and Harrison were at odds over the recently proposed McKinley Tariff.]]

=Anticatholicism=

The magazine was founded by German immigrants who were sympathetic to Otto von Bismarck who launched a major Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church in Germany. Puck especially targeted Irish Catholics in New York City, where they controlled Tammany Hall. John J. Appel, "From shanties to lace curtains: the Irish image in Puck, 1876–1910." Comparative Studies in Society and History 13.4 (1971): 365-375. According to historian Samuel Thomas, himself a Catholic: See "In Memoriam: Sam Thomas, 1941-2024" (Department of History, Michigan State U. 2024) [https://history.msu.edu/in-memoriam-sam-thomas-1941-2024/ online]

[I]n an age of partisan politics and partisan journalism, Puck became the nation's premier journal of graphic humor and political satire, played an important role as a non-partisan crusader for good government and the triumph of American constitutional ideals. Its prime targets, however, were not just corrupt machine politicians. The magazine included as well ...[the] political agenda of the Catholic Church, especially its new Pope, Leo XIII....Tammany Hall... was all the more dangerous to Puck because, beginning in the 1870s, Irish Catholics dominated it.... In cartoons and editorials spanning two decades, the magazine blasted and often conjoined both Tammany and the papacy with invidious comparisons that left few readers in doubt as to their sympathies.{{cite journal |first= Samuel J. |last= Thomas |title= Mugwump Cartoonists, the Papacy, and Tammany Hall in America's Gilded Age |journal= Religion and American Culture |date= Summer 2004 |volume= 14 |issue= 2 |pages= 213–250 |doi=10.1525/rac.2004.14.2.213|s2cid= 145410903 }}

Contributors

Over the years, Puck employed many early cartoonists of note, including, Louis Dalrymple, Bernhard Gillam, Friedrich Graetz, Livingston Hopkins, Frederick Burr Opper, Louis Glackens, Albert Levering, Frank Nankivell, J. S. Pughe, Rose O'Neill, Charles Taylor, James Albert Wales, and Eugene Zimmerman.

Puck Building

Puck was housed from 1887 in the landmark Chicago-style, Romanesque Revival Puck Building at Lafayette and Houston streets, New York City. The steel-frame building was designed by architects Albert and Herman Wagner in 1885, as the world's largest lithographic pressworks under a single roof, with its own electricity-generating dynamo. It takes up a full block on Houston Street, bounded by Lafayette and Mulberry streets.

Legacy

Years after its conclusion, the "Puck" name and slogan were revived as part of the Comic Weekly Sunday comic section that ran on Hearst's newspaper chain beginning in September 1931 and continuing until the 1970s. It was then revived again by Hearst's Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which folded in 1989.

Gallery of ''Puck'' cartoons

File:Schurz Forester1.jpg|U.S. Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz accosts Senator James G. Blaine chopping down a tree in the forest, c. 1878

File:Puck - Carl Edler von Stur - Go West! 1881-2.jpg|European Royalties: Go West! (after assassination of Alexander II of Russia), March 30, 1881

File:Emoticons Puck 1881 with Text.png|Emoticons, March 30, 1881

File:PUCK1881-Joseph Keppler-President Garfield (NYPL).jpg|President James A. Garfield, Auf seinem Posten gefällt, July 6, 1881

File:PuckMagazineCoverGoneToMeetJohnKelly11091881.jpg|Gone to meet John Kelly (Hugh McLaughlin, the Irish Catholic political "boss" of Brooklyn) being deposited in "Hades" (hell), November 9, 1881 cover

File:PUCK-Monopoly Millionaires Dividing the Country.jpg|German edition: Monopoly Millionaires Dividing the Country (William Henry Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Cyrus West Field, Russell Sage; Andrew Carnegie), 1885

File:Joseph Ferdinand, Keppler Rapid Transit to Sheol 1888 Cornell CUL PJM 1097 01.jpg|Rapid Transit to Sheol—Where We Are All Going According to the Reverend Dr. Morgan Dix by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, 1888

File:Puck112188c.jpg|Nasty little printer's devils, 1888

File:OZ5-2-94.JPG|Cyclone as metaphor for political revolution during U.S. mid-term elections of 1894

File:School Begins (Puck Magazine 1-25-1899).jpg|School Begins by Louis Dalrymple, January 25, 1899

File:PuckCartoon-TeddyRoosevelt-05-23-1906.jpg|The Infant Hercules and the Standard Oil Serpents by Frank A. Nankivell, depicting U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt grabbing the head of Nelson W. Aldrich and the snake-like body of John D. Rockefeller, May 23, 1906

File:Paris in half-mourning by Ralph Burton 1915.jpg|"Paris in Half-Mourning" by Ralph Barton, 1915

File:Henry Mayer, The Awakening, 1915 Cornell CUL PJM 1176 01 - Restoration.jpg|The Awakening (depicting the universal suffrage movement) by Henry "Hy" Mayer, 1915

File:John Bull's dilemma - Dalrymple. LCCN2012648689 (cropped).jpg|"John Bull's dilemma": "It's 'ard to 'ave to disturb 'im–'e's such a good customer!" Puck, 1895

Notes

References

{{cite book |first=Richard Samuel |last=West |title=Satire On Stone |url=https://archive.org/details/satireonstonepol0000west |url-access=registration |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1988 |isbn=0-252-01497-9}}
{{cite book |first1=Michael Alexander |last1=Kahn |author-link1=Michael Alexander Kahn |first2=Richard Samuel |last2=West |title=What Fools These Mortals Be!: The Story of Puck; America's First And Most Influential Magazine of Color Political Cartoon |publisher=IDW Publishing |location=San Diego, CA |year=2004 |isbn=978-1-63140-046-9}}

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/19990220135410/http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EMA96/PUCK/ U Virginia collection], color cartoons
[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008886840 Puck] at HathiTrust (black and white)
[https://archive.org/details/pub_puck Puck at archive.org (black and white, scanned from microfilms)]
[http://www.greatcaricatures.com/keppler/01_keppler.shtml Gallery of 1877 Puck Magazine caricatures by Joseph Keppler]
[http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/puckframes.html Cartoons from Puck featuring U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110203032232/http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/puckframes.html |date=February 3, 2011 }}
[http://library.gwu.edu/ead/ms2121.xml Guide to the Samuel Halperin Puck and Judge Cartoon Collection, 1879–1903], Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University