Satire and the city : visual representation and satirical journalism in nineteenth century satirical periodicals

This paper examines the dynamics of the visual representations in a range of British nineteenth century satirical periodicals. These publications were a common feature of the urban publishing landscape during this period. Their focus was various aspects of city life such as reviews, poetry, fiction, commentary and city council reports. Many of these periodicals included visual cues and representations of the city, both on the masthead and within the cover pages (and often shoehorned into the sides of the page) that depicted and satirised aspects of city life and the role of the satirical journalist. The interplay between the design elements and the words on the periodical page presents an opportunity to revisit not just the aesthetic aspects of periodical publication during the long nineteenth century but also a measure of their economic viability, which was often turbulent. Intense competition between these publications meant that this was a very crowded marketplace at this time with the inevitable closures and mergers/amalgamations of titles that were a regular feature of the nineteenth century periodical landscape. Both the visual depictions of the city and satirical journalism and their placement on the page are a good indicator of the journal’s relationship to its urban environment and of the satirical role of the periodical in that space