The Great Exhibition represented in the pages of Punch Magazine

In class this week we'll be looking closely at a large number of images, mostly woodcuts and wood-engravings from Volume XX and XXI (1851) of one of the most influential and innovative magazines of the Victorian era. Here is a link to a full-text digital facsimile that will give a better and more full understanding of the text/image relationships. Every image in today's slideshow references the Great Exhibition and the Crystal Palace in one way or another. Sometimes it's quite literal, and at other times the connections are obscure to viewers separated by 165 years and the Atlantic Ocean. Through the months of 1851 we can see a trajectory of hope and curiosity, amazement, spectacle. saturation, exhaustion. In the pages of Punch everything was laced with brutal humor. Close inspection of the frontispiece to Volume XXI (above) shows the jousting horses of "Satire", "Wit", and "Justice" beating down "Hum-bug" and "Twaddle".  The image below is one of dozens that depicts the Crystal Palace as a backdrop to social, cultural, and political events of the day. 

The VictorianWeb has a great collection of information about the Great Exhibition.  From the British Library, see also Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (1854).