Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 108, February 16, 1895

This is Punch at its finest: a razor-sharp weekly assault on Victorian pretension, delivered in the dead of February 1895. Within these pages, the magazine's legendary cartoonists skewer the year's first flutterings of political scandal and social absurdity, while its writers deploy that distinctly British weapon of gentle devastation, the well-turned phrase. Here you'll find comedy about the man who discovers that poverty makes rather a nuisance of itself when seeking employment, observational pieces on the emerging madness of winter sports (ludicrous to proper English sensibilities), and sly digs at the evening's theatrical offerings. But Punch was never merely funny. It was the indispensable companion for anyone who wanted to understand what the educated classes of empire actually thought about their world, their anxieties, their snobberies, their secret irreverence toward the very institutions they upheld. Reading this issue feels like eavesdropping on a Victorian dinner party where everyone's witty and no one's safe.