Abstract
This chapter considers the place of joke-writing and joke-telling in Victorian culture. Firstly, it outlines four ways in which Victorian observers accounted for the creation of jokes: (1) the work of anonymous professional humourists; (2) the observation and comic reinterpretation of real-life incidents; (3) spontaneous wit and (4) the endurance of seemingly ‘eternal’ jokes. Next, it considers how and why jokes were performed at Victorian social occasions, such as dinner parties, and explores their function as a form of conversational capital. Finally, the chapter traces the mass circulation of jokes in popular Victorian newspapers and magazines. As a case study, it tracks the reprinting of jokes from a single issue of Punch magazine and considers the ambiguous copyright status of these texts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Andrews, Malcolm. Charles Dickens and His Performing Selves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Anonymous. ‘Advertisement.’ The Athenaeum. January 21, 1888.
Anonymous. ‘Du Maurier’s “Joke Pots.”’ London Journal. October 15, 1904.
Anonymous. ‘Grains of Gall.’ Hampshire Telegraph. July 21, 1888.
Anonymous. ‘Half-a-Crown Every Week for a Joke.’ Belfast Telegraph. November 24, 1887.
Anonymous. ‘Half-a-Crown Every Week for a Joke.’ Dundee Weekly News. February 19, 1887.
Anonymous. ‘Imitation the Sincerest Flattery.’ Dundee Courier. November 19, 1887.
Anonymous. ‘Imported Humour.’ Leeds Mercury. April 29, 1882.
Anonymous. ‘In a Joke Factory.’ Hampshire Telegraph. April 22, 1899.
Anonymous. ‘Jokes by our Readers.’ Illustrated Chips. March 23, 1895.
Anonymous. ‘Men Who Write Jokes.’ Newcastle Weekly Courant. June 16, 1894.
Anonymous. ‘Motley.’ Bristol Mercury. November 28, 1896.
Anonymous. ‘Mr Gladstone and the Jokes.’ Dundee Weekly News. September 21, 1889.
Anonymous. ‘New Publications.’ Hampshire Advertiser. May 8, 1858.
Anonymous. ‘Notes—Mainly Personal.’ Dundee Evening Telegraph. January 14, 1898.
Anonymous. ‘Satires and Caricatures of the Eighteenth Century.’ Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. November 1848.
Anonymous. ‘Selected Anecdotes, &c.’ Lancaster Gazette. January 25, 1845.
Anonymous. ‘Stories of the Sanctum.’ Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail. June 23, 1894.
Anonymous. ‘The Autobiography of a Good Joke.’ Bentley’s Miscellany. July 1837.
Anonymous. ‘The Business of Joke-Making.’ Derry Journal. March 6, 1895.
Anonymous. ‘The Joke Copyright Protective Company.’ Lancaster Gazette. January 25, 1845
Anonymous. ‘Unassorted Fun.’ Hampshire Telegraph. April 22, 1899.
Anonymous. ‘Wit and Humour.’ Cardiff Times. January 23, 1897.
Anonymous. ‘Worthy of Attention.’ Punch Almanac. 1845.
Anonymous. The Book of Humour, Wit, and Wisdom: A Manual of Table-Talk. London: Routledge, 1867.
Beals, M. H. ‘Musings on a Multimodal Analysis of Scissors-and-Paste Journalism (Parts 1–4).’ Accessed May 14, 2018. https://www.mhbeals.com.
Brough, Lawrence, and John R. Kemble, eds. Jokelets, Being the Merry Book of the Moore & Burgess Minstrels. London: Saxon & Co., 1901.
Burnand, F. C. ‘Punch Notes—II.’ The Pall Mall Magazine. July 1899.
Collins, Charles Allston. ‘To Be Taken at the Dinner Table.’ Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions; Being the Christmas Number of all the Year Round. December 1865.
Emanuel, Walter. ‘A Note on British Wit and Humour.’ Pall Mall Magazine. July, 1901.
Feely, Catherine. ‘“What Say You to Free Trade in Literature?” The Thief and the Politics of Piracy in the 1830s.’ Journal of Victorian Culture 19, no. 4 (2014): 497–506.
Gray, Donald J. ‘A List of Comic Periodicals Published in Great Britain, 1800–1900.’ Victorian Periodicals Newsletter, no. 15 (1972): 2–39.
Hood, Tom, ed. The Book of Modern English Anecdotes, Humour, Wit and Wisdom. London: Routledge, 1872.
Keene, Charles. ‘Thrift.’ Punch. December 5, 1868.
Kuipers, Giselinde. Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006.
Leary, Patrick. The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London. London: British Library, 2010.
Masson, Thomas L. ‘How I Wrote 50,000 Jokes.’ Our American Humorists, 432–448. New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1922.
Matthews, Brander. ‘On the Antiquity of Jests.’ Longman’s Magazine. February, 1885.
McGill, Meredith L. American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834–1853. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Motley, John, ed. Joe Miller’s Jests or, the Wits Vade-Mecum. London: T. Read, 1739.
Mulholland, Clara. ‘Molly’s Fortunes.’ Hampshire Telegraph. April 22, 1899.
Nicholson, Bob. ‘You Kick the Bucket; We Do The Rest!: Jokes at the Culture of Reprinting in the Transatlantic Press.’ Journal of Victorian Culture 17, no. 3 (2012): 273–286.
Pigeon, Stephen. ‘Steal It, Change It, Print It: Transatlantic Scissors-and-Paste Journalism in the Ladies Treasury, 1857–1895.’ Journal of Victorian Culture 22, no. 1 (2017): 24–39.
Seville, Catherine. Literary Copyright Reform in Early Victorian England: The Framing of the 1842 Copyright Act. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Smith, David A., Ryan Cordell, and Abby Mullen. ‘Computational Methods for Uncovering Reprinted Texts in Antebellum Newspapers.’ American Literary History 27, no. 3 (2015): 1–15.
Spielmann, M. H. ‘The Rivals of Punch.’ The National Review. July 1895.
Spielmann, M. H. The History of Punch. London: Cassell & Company, 1895.
Wickberg, Daniel. The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Wister, Sarah Butler. ‘A Plea for Seriousness.’ Atlantic Monthly. May 1892.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nicholson, B. (2020). ‘Capital Company’: Writing and Telling Jokes in Victorian Britain. In: Lee, L. (eds) Victorian Comedy and Laughter. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57882-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57882-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57881-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57882-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)