''Punchinello'' was an American

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

. Inspired by the English publication '' Punch'', it ran in weekly editions from 2 April 1870 to 24 December 1870.

History

The magazine was founded by former editors of '' Vanity Fair'', which went out of business in 1863. They found four investors willing to provide $5000 each—though they did not disclose that those four were robber baron

Jay Gould Jason Gould (; May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who founded the Gould family, Gould business dynasty. He is generally identified as one of the Robber baron (industrialist), robber bar ...

, financial buccaneer Jim Fisk, and corrupt politicians

Boss Tweed William Magear "Boss" Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April 12, 1878) was an American politician most notable for being the political boss of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party's political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19t ...

and

Peter B. Sweeny Peter Barr Sweeny (October 9, 1825 New York City – August 30, 1911 Mahopac, Putnam County, New York) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. Life He was the son of James Sweeny, who kept a hotel in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Mary ...

. It ceased publication within a year. The magazine's main illustrator was

Henry Louis Stephens Henry Louis Stephens (February 11, 1824 – December 13, 1882) was an American illustrator and editorial cartoonist. Art career Henry Louis Stephens was born in Philadelphia in 1824. Around 1859, he went to New York under an engagement with Fran ...

, who produced a full-page cartoon every week. Other sections included theater reviews, correspondence (real or fictional) from Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, and essays on foreign affairs. According to historian of periodicals

Frank Luther Mott Frank Luther Mott (April 4, 1886 – October 23, 1964) was an American academic, historian and journalist, who won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for History for Volumes II and III of his series, '' A History of American Magazines''. Early life and educ ...

, "in format as in name, it was an imitator of the London ''Punch''." However Mott stipulated that, unlike its antecedent, "''Punchinello'' was not very funny."

References

External links

Full-text access
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Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 Periodical literature, periodical ti ...

Satirical magazines published in the United States Weekly magazines published in the United States Defunct political magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1870 Magazines disestablished in 1870 {{US-poli-mag-stub