Puck (magazine)
|
|
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. 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's Night 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" by 13.5" 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 (1877 - 1892) 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 February 19, 1894 and H. C. Brunner, editor of Puck since 1877 continued the magazine until his death May 11, 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 Opper, Charles Taylor, James Wales and Eugene Zimmerman.
Puck Building
Puck Magazine 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.
Source
"Satire On Stone" Richard Samuel West, University of Illinois Press, 1988, ISBN 0-252-01497-9
External links
- Puck 's Puck illustrated. (http://www.nycjpg.com/2003/pages/0618.html)
- Puck magazine influenced the development of cartoons. (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTpuck.htm)
- American cast zinc sculpture. (http://www.si.edu/scmre/learning/zincscuplture.htm)