Figaro in London

The reason for the choice of name was announced in the opening editorial as building on the success of the French satirical daily Le Figaro, founded five years before.

The weekly paper's format comprised four double-columned sheets, priced one penny, with political comment, society gossip, verses and theatre reviews as regular features.

Beneath this was, as the paper's motto, the lines by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: "Satire should, like a polish’d razor keen, Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen."

In a review of these, the surviving Figaro in London was described in an article in The Mechanics Magazine as "a political squib which obtained a large circulation during the Reform excitement.

There were firstly the four volumes of the Comic Magazine in which illustrations by Seymour figured prominently, along with articles and poems, several items of which were taken from Figaro in London.