Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 148, February 3, 1915

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2

Word count: 76K words
Chapters: 8

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.Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 148, February 3, 1915 by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Jan 13, 2014

Editor's review

This is the public-domain electronic edition of the February 3, 1915 issue of Punch, the long-running British humor and cartoon magazine, published during the First World War. Its contents are mainly cartoons, satirical pieces, jokes, and social commentary; it reflects the everyday mood of wartime British society and preserves the popular humor style and layout of the time. For readers studying the social culture of WWI, the history of the British press, or the tradition of satirical cartooning, this issue is concrete and vivid primary material; for general readers, it is light reading for sampling British humor from a century ago. Note that the original is in English, and the jokes and satire depend heavily on the social context and wordplay of the time; some content needs notes today. As a free Project Gutenberg resource, it suits excerpt reading and reference rather than reading straight through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying British social culture during WWI
Readers interested in British humor and satirical cartoons
Historical writers needing primary periodical material
Learners who want short English texts for extensive reading practice

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting continuous long-form narrative
Readers with weak English who find puns and satire hard to follow
Readers sensitive to social attitudes and expressions of a century ago

Reading tips

Start with the cartoons and short jokes, then choose longer satirical pieces.
Understand the jokes' targets in light of the 1915 historical context.
Treat the issue as a source collection and excerpt by theme rather than reading in order.
English learners can closely read two or three short pieces at a time and check notes.

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.

FAQ

Is this a book or a magazine issue?

This is the February 3, 1915 issue of Punch, volume 148, made into a public-domain ebook by Project Gutenberg. It contains cartoons, jokes, and satirical pieces, not a continuous long work.

Why are some jokes hard to understand now?

The humor depends heavily on British social context, current events, and wordplay around 1915. Without that background it is naturally hard to grasp; read with WWI historical material and notes.

Can it be used as historical research material?

It can be used as primary material for studying British social mood, periodical publishing, and the satirical cartoon tradition during WWI. But it is itself a humor magazine, so citations should be cross-checked with other historical sources.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.