PUCK: What Fools These Mortals Be!—

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“it is hard to overestimate the political influence of puCk…during the last two decades of the 19th Century. it was greater than all newspapers combined.”

THE STORY OF

PUCK

“in these early days of cartooning, the weekly humor

MAG AZINE

magazine gave cartoons real prominence, and cartoonists

—stephen hess, e Ungentlemanly Art

immediately began pushing every limit of the art form.” —from the foreword by Bill Watterson

With nearly 300 color plates What fools these Mortals Be: the story of puCk is the first full-color monograph devoted to the most important political satire and cartoon magazine in american history. e weekly journal’s de caricatures and pointed commentary made it a political force to be reckoned with. it is credited with single-handedly thwarting the third-term ambitions of ulysses s. Grant in 1880 and electing Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884—or at least, by its devastating “tattooed Man” series, denying it to James G. Blaine. and puCk did it with art—lavish color full-page and two-page centerspread cartoons. Many of the issues that dominated puCk’s pages more than one hundred years ago continue to influence the political debate today.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER KAHN AND RICHARD SAMUEL WEST

“[puCk] created a genre and established a tradition.” — david sloane, American Humor Magazine and Comic Periodicals Michael Alexander Kahn is the co-author of May it aMuse the Court: editorial Cartoons of the supreMe Court and the Constitution and more than a dozen scholarly articles on the presidency and the supreme Court. he has assembled one of the country’s leading collections of political cartoons, which has been featured in numerous magazine articles and in an exhibit at the Grolier Club in new york in 2007. he is a frequent lecturer on the significance of political cartoon art and has developed educational materials based on the art for teaching on the university and high school levels and in museum programs. Richard Samuel West is the author of several books on american political cartooning, the most recent being iConoClast in ink: the politiCal Cartoons of J. n. "dinG" darlinG (2012), and the editor of four collections of political cartoons. he was the founder and editor of tarGet: the politiCal Cartoon Quarterly (19811987), and the political cartoon editor of inks, the MaGazine of CartooninG, published by ohio state university (1994-1997). he is the owner of periodyssey, located in easthampton, Massachusetts, which buys and sells significant and unusual american periodicals.

published from 1877 to 1918, puCk was an american original—the country’s first and most successful humor magazine, the first magazine to publish color lithographs on a weekly basis, and for nearly forty years, a training ground and showcase for some of the country’s most talented cartoonists, led by its co-founder, Joseph keppler.

THE STORY OF

PUCK

AMERICA’S FIRST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MAGAZINE OF COLOR POLITICAL CARTOONS FOREWORD BY BILL WATTERSON

during its illustrious career puCk published more than two thousand numbered issues. When, aer four decades, it ceased publication, e Literary Digest printed an appropriate epitaph: “Puck had no real rival in its best days. fallen from its fine estate, it has le no successor.”