Mr. Punch in Society: Being the Humours of Social Life

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
99K words
Chapters
10

Tags

English Originals Essays and Miscellany Comic MagazineSocial CustomsLight ReadingIllustrated GuideHumorous SatireBritish HumorSatirical StyleSocial LifeVictorian Era

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Mr. Punch in Society: Being the Humours of Social Life by Hammerton and Du MaurierAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PN: Language and Literatures: Literature: General, Criticism, Collections, Release Date: Jan 27, 2015

Editor's review

This book is a compilation of cartoons and social satire from Punch magazine, compiled by Hammerton and illustrated by Du Maurier, presenting the comic manners of Victorian upper-middle-class British society around the theme of social life. Its value lies not in telling a complete story but in preserving, through words and pictures, the humorous language of an era: dinner parties, balls, country visits, social climbing, and vanity are all turned into short, witty jokes. For today's readers it is both light entertainment and primary material for observing nineteenth-century British social customs, ideas of etiquette, and cartoon art. Du Maurier's illustrations are simple in line yet vividly expressive, serving as annotations to the text; readers can enjoy them even by browsing the pictures alone. It suits reading in fragments, and also serves as supplementary reading for the history of humor, periodical cartoons, or Victorian social history; note, however, that its language and allusions bear a distinct mark of the era, and some jokes require background knowledge to appreciate.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read in sessions by theme, choosing one scene such as a dinner party or a ball each time, to avoid fatigue from reading too much at once.
  2. Look at the illustrations first, then read the text, using the pictures to understand characters' expressions and scenes and reduce the language barrier.
  3. Mark unfamiliar allusions or etiquette terms first, and look them up together after finishing the piece.
  4. Read alongside other books on Victorian social customs to appreciate the era's ideas behind the humor.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a cartoon collection? It is not a continuous novel but a collection of humorous texts and cartoon illustrations compiled around the theme of social life. The texts are mostly short satirical pieces, and the illustrations are by Du Maurier; together they present the comic manners of social occasions of the time. It suits browsing rather than following a plot from beginning to end.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for English learners? The original is nineteenth-century English, with sentence patterns and vocabulary characteristic of the era, and some jokes depend on social allusions of the time; overall difficulty is moderate to high. Readers with some English foundation who are willing to look things up can use it as extended reading material, but it is not suitable as an introductory text.
What background knowledge should I have beforehand? Familiarity with Victorian upper-middle-class social customs such as dinner parties, balls, and country visits, as well as the satirical tradition of Punch magazine, will make the jokes easier to grasp. Readers unfamiliar with the background can start with the illustrations and titles, then understand the text with annotations or related materials.

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About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.