Encyclopedia
Puck was America's first successful humor magazine known for its sharp humor and colorful
cartoon caricatures
satirizing the political and social issues of the day.
Politics and religion
Politically it sided with the Bourbon Democrats--its hero was
Grover Cleveland. It favored
German Americans and pilloried
Irish Americans.
As Thomas [2004] explains, in an age of extreme partisan politics,
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 what it, like the letterpress, condemned as the
nefarious political agenda of the Catholic church, especially its new Pope,
Leo XIII. Indeed, New York's infamous Irish
Tammany Hall, committed to spoils and patronage as the means of dominating the body politic, was all the more dangerous to Puck because, beginning in the 1870s, Irish
Catholics dominated it. The hall's Irish Catholic base enabled the magazine to rationalize more completely its conviction that the Catholic church, ruled by a foreign potentate dressed in the irrational garb of infallibility, was a menace not only to the nation's body politic but also to its democratic soul. If allowed to proceed unimpeded, the pope and his minions, along with Tammany's bosses and supporters, would convert the nation into their personal fiefdom.
Puck was not about to let that happen. 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 complicity. [Thomas 2004]
History
The weekly
magazine was founded by Joseph Keppler, Sr. in
St. Louis and began publishing English and German language editions in March, 1871. Five years later the German edition of
Puck moved to New York City publishing the first magazine on September 27, 1876 followed by the English edition on March 14, 1877. The English magazine continued for over forty years under several owners and editors until it was bought by the
William Randolph Hearst company in 1916. The publication continued until 1918, when the last edition was distributed September 5.
"Puckish" meaning "childishly mischievous" is a 19th-century usage of the word, which led
Shakespeare's Puck from
Midsummer Night's Dream to be recast for the title of the magazine.
Puck was the first magazine to carry illustrated advertising and the first to successfully adopt full color
lithography printing to a weekly publication. The magazine consisted of sixteen pages measuring 10 inches by 13.5 inches with color front and back covers and a color double page
centerfold. The cover 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 and appears not only on the magazine cover but over the building's entrance as well.
In May 1893, Puck Press published
A Selection of Cartoons from Puck by Joseph Keppler featuring fifty-six cartoons chosen by Keppler as his best work. Also during 1893, Keppler temporarily moved to
Chicago and published a smaller sized, twelve page version of
Puck from the Chicago World's Fair grounds. Shortly thereafter, Joseph Keppler died and H. C. Brunner, editor of
Puck since 1877 continued the magazine until his death in 1896. Five years later, Joseph Keppler, Jr. became the editor. Over the years Puck employed many early cartoonists including, Louis Dalrymple, Bernard Gillam, Livingston Hopkins, Frederick Burr Opper,
Louis Glackens, Albert Levering, Frank Nankivell, J.S. Pughe, Rose O'Neill, Charles Taylor, James 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.
Sources
- Richard Samuel West, Satire On Stone, University of Illinois Press, 1988, ISBN 0-252-01497-9
- Samuel J. Thomas, "Mugwump Cartoonists, the Papacy, and Tammany Hall in America's Gilded Age" Religion and American Culture Summer 2004, Vol. 14, No. 2, Pages 213-250
See also
External links
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