Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, October 2, 1841

The first issue of the magazine that defined British satire. Published on October 2, 1841, Punch arrived in Victorian London as an antidote to pomposity and cant. This founding number contains the DNA of everything that would make the publication legendary: sharp political cartoons, sly social commentary, and essays skewering the pretensions of the rising middle class with gleeful precision. Among the notable pieces, 'The Tiptoes' offers a wicked portrait of bourgeois gentility, those desperate to appear cultivated while lacking any authentic culture. Here too are lampoons of parliamentary absurdity, social conventions at their most ridiculous, and the eccentricities that made England so ripe for ridicule. The humor remains remarkably fresh because human nature hasn't changed: we still love to laugh at status anxiety, at those above us, and at the preposterous ways we all perform our lives. For anyone curious about where modern satire began, this is the ur-text, the first strike of a publication that would skewer kings, prime ministers, and the pomposities of empire for over 150 years.