Punch, or The London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells.

Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells, on an initial investment of £25 (equivalent to £2,871 in 2023).

Bradbury and Evans capitalised on newly evolving mass printing technologies and also were the publishers for Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.

This group became known as "The Punch Brotherhood", which also included Charles Dickens, who joined Bradbury and Evans after leaving Chapman and Hall in 1843.

[7] After months of financial difficulty and lack of market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against the satirical press of the time.

Historian Richard Altick writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s...Punch had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, royalty itself".

[8] Increasing in readership and popularity throughout the remainder of the 1840s and '50s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals.

Punch enjoyed an audience including Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte Brontë, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell.

Punch gave several phrases to the English language, including The Crystal Palace, and the "Curate's egg" (first seen in an 1895 cartoon by George du Maurier).

Towards the end of the 19th century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss, Linley Sambourne, Francis Carruthers Gould, and Phil May.

The wooden surface is scarred with the carved initials of the magazine's long-term writers, artists, and editors, as well as six invited "strangers", including James Thurber and Charles III (then Prince of Wales).

The magazine was published by Thomas Blades de Walden, a dilapidated member of one of the great aristocratic families of England, and an associated of the officers of the garrison stationed in Toronto.