Deep in the recesses of the British Library sits a long oval dining table of plain deal, its battered surface deeply scored with crudely carved initials. This unprepossessing piece of furniture was once the most famous table in London: the legendary Punch Table, where the staff of the most successful and influential comic magazine the English-speaking world has ever seen gathered every week for decades. Based on extensive research among unpublished letters, diaries, minute books, and business records, The Punch Brotherhood takes the reader inside this Victorian institution, bringing to life the tightly-knit community of writers, artists, and proprietors who gathered around the Punch Table, and their tumultuous, uninhibited conversations, spiced with jokes and gossip. Highlighting the role of talk in the understanding of nineteenth-century print culture, and shedding new light on the careers of literary giants Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and of the many lesser authors who laboured in their shadow, this ground-breaking study vividly demonstrates how oral culture permeated and shaped the realm of print, from the dining tables of exclusive men's clubs to the alleyways of Fleet Street.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction 1
Mister Punch and the Historians
Oral Culture, Print Culture
Community and Production
Chapter 1 The Brotherhood of the Punch Table 10
The Evolution of the Dinner Meeting
The Early Staff at Table, 1843-1857
Henry Silver and His Diary, 1858-1870
Chapter 2 Cartoons and Conversations: The Large Cut 22
Many Voices
Imagining the Reader
Following the News
Give and Take
Chapter 3 Gossip and the Literary Life 57
Literary Success and Literary Talk
Swinburne: Scandal and Judgment
The Bohemians
Chapter 4 Town Talk: Dickens, Thackeray, and the Policing of Gossip 79
The Great Rivalry
Dickens and Gossip: 'Amazing Slanders'
The 'Personal Statement' and its Consequences
The Garrick Affair: 'Printing Comments upon My Private Conversation'
The Committee
'The Garrick is in Convulsions'
'Wheels within Wheels'
Chapter 5 Shirley Brooks and the flight from Bohemia 110
'A Scrambling, Uncertain Life': the Struggle for Respectability
The Tory Journalist and the 'Grown Up' Punch
'I Mount a Good Many Guns': the Exercise of Influence
'The Important Purpose of My Life': the Fragility of Success
Chapter 6 Bradbury and Evans and the Personal Politics of Print Culture 133
Bradbury and Evans before Punch: Master Printers
Punch before Bradbury and Evans: 'We must have Cash!'
Punch after Bradbury and Evans: The Capitalization of Sociability
Talk, Fellowship, and Production
Sales, Profit, and Friendship
From Printer-Proprietors to Publishers
Conclusion
Epilogue 173
Appendix: The Henry Silver 'Diary' 178
Select Bibliography 181
Index 193
Overview
Deep in the recesses of the British Library sits a long oval dining table of plain deal, its battered surface deeply scored with crudely carved initials. This unprepossessing piece of furniture was once the most famous table in London: the legendary Punch Table, where the staff of the most successful and influential comic magazine the English-speaking world has ever seen gathered every week for decades. Based on extensive research among unpublished letters, diaries, minute books, and business records, The Punch ...