Paris. Figaro's model originated there, as did that of The Thief {Le Voleur vnas another Parisian publication).
Ten years later, Punch Itself would model itself (ostensibly) on Philipon’s Le Charivari. The Parisian Figaro
was a liberal paper which focussed its attacks on the ministry rather than the monarchy, it began as a literary journal, but soon turned into a political daily. It was condemned by the Correctional Tribunal for, “suggesting that the king had suffered from an affliction of the eyes when he chose his new ministry”, but
was not prosecuted, as juries were then more willing to acquit small journals than large daily newspapers.
success was, to a certain extent, made possible by the fact that it was launched into a pre-existing market for cheap illustrated periodical literature. Although the two most famous examples of early Victorian quarto penny periodicals - Figaro itself and the SDUK’s Penny Magazine (1832-45) - did not make their initial impact until 1832, the market for journals of a similar format had begun to take shape more than a decade earlier.
The graphic codes and conventions of format which would dominate this area of the press until the 1860s were established as early as 1820 by The Mirror of
Literature, Amusement and Instruction (1820-45, fig .1 41) which, as Brian
Maidment has pointed out, “represents a key periodical for understanding the transitions from polite to mass culture during these decades.” Along with similar titles, such as The Portfolio (1823-29) and The Hive (1822-24), The Mirror v/as a sixteen page octavo weekly, costing twopence. Despite their smaller page dimensions and greater page count, these titles were enormously influential in terms of their basic layout. The pattern which they established for the front page of an illustrated periodical consisted of two columns of text beneath a centrally-placed woodcut, separated from the masthead by a horizontal band containing details of issue number, date and price. Maidment has emphasised the extent to which this conventional layout held sway between 1820 and 1860, acknowledging the “tediously similar” appearance it gave to the periodical literature of the era, and attributing its ubiquity to an “apparently unquestioning acceptance of the nature of a title page in so many levels and varieties of discourse in the early Victorian
p e r io d .”2o Certainly, the periodical press during the period thrived on imitation
rather than innovation, and the numerous satirical journals which appeared in the wake of Figaro’s success make an interesting case study in its fundamentally emulative nature.
Having said this, however, although the basic layout of the octavo journals of the
19 Brian Maidment, Into the 1830s,p. 5. See also Simon Houfe, Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and
Caricaturists, 1830-1914(revised ed., 1981) and James, op.cit, (1963), pp. 12-13 for the importance of the periodicals of the 1820s in establishing a broad market for cheap illustrated periodical literature.
20 Maidment, op.cit,p. 9. “Such a format may derive from newspaper layout, but it is also the
characteristic broadside page. The almost unanimous acceptance of this page format is fascinating and open to various interpretations. Only with the octavo monthlies of the 1860s, which separated out the
illustrations from the text in Imitation of the older genteel copperplate tradition (exemplified in, say. The
Comhillor Once a Week),did this format begin to falter. From tract to penny journal, from serial fiction to
Punch,the double column, integrated illustration, and black letter title holds sway.” This fe somewhat
overstated, à Beckett’s Comic Magazine,for example, separated certain images as whole pages, blank on
1820s remained the primary model for the title pages of Figaro and its kind, the penny satirical periodicals of the early ‘30s did not adhere to the format with absolute rigidity. Images were often set in only one column, rather than being centrally placed, and could appear either above or below the text. In certain instances, they did not appear on the title page at all, but inside the paper instead. With Figaro, for example, there was no standard pattern for the location of images on a weekly basis and, as it became better established, the role of illustration occasionally achieved a more central role altogether, especially when an issue was given over to one of its seasonal 'political pantomimes', which made a feature of the numerous cuts which accompanied the text.
But beyond the illustrations themselves, the majority of such titles retained a remarkably coherent structure from week to week, which reflected the standard format of the penny quarto press as a whole. In this respect, considering its adherence to such a conventionalised format, it should be stressed that from its outset, the material characteristics and layout of Figaro signified cheap periodical’ as much as, if not more than, they did ‘graphic satire’, and in doing so it inevitably reduced the status of Seymour’s designs by making them subordinate to the broader sweep of the periodical’s weekly content. It should be stressed at this point that Figaro was never solely a political, or indeed satirical, periodical. Like so many of its contemporaries it inherited (again from the cheap periodical press of the 1820s) a broadly miscellaneous nature. A number of the journals of the ‘20s had established the medium of the periodical as a repository for a wide range of knowledge and information, rather than focussing on just a single topic, paving the way for the ‘Useful Knowledge’ titles of the 1830s (such as The Penny and
Saturday Magazines) as well as for the more expensive illustrated miscellanies of
the 1840s, such as Lloyd’s Weekly Gazette and The London Magazine.
à Beckett was clearly aware of the appeal of a varied content, and quickly established Figaro as a vehicle for his own interests in literature and the world of the stage, quite apart from the political leaders which were the focus of every issue. The address to the public in the first issue laid out the proposed format in quite literal terms:
“The Figaro in London will consist of four departments, each of which will occupy generally about one page of
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every number. Our leading articles will be principally good-humoured squibs on passing events of primary popular interest. Our second head will be called The
Interpreter... our third will be made up of Brevities, and,
our fourth, devoted to spirited and unbiased notices of the drama.”2i
By and large, this basic format would remain in place for more than five years. The exact length of these sections was never entirely static, but broadly speaking each issue was broken down along the following lines: the lead article occupied the title page, frequently stretching into the first column of page two; The Interpreter' took up the remainder of page two, occasionally extending over to page three; Brevities' filled most of page three, which generally also included the beginning of the Theatricals' Section; while page four (the back page) contained the remainder of the 'Theatricals', notices to correspondents, announcements, and the occasional advertisement.22 in terms of content, the 'leading article' was invariably political in nature, while The Interpreter' focused more on social satire (lampooning social aspiration, the hypocrisy of the 'rising' middle classes, and so forth). The Brevities' section, as the title implies, consisted of short jokes, squibs, rhymes and puns - the staples of the kind of humorous literature of which à Beckett and his peers were so fond - and the 'Theatricals' section listed performances at the principal West End theatres, and generally also included reviews and backstage' gossip. The ‘spirited and unbiased' nature of this section was its raison d’être
effectively providing à Beckett with a forum from which to vent his spleen against any figures from the theatrical world who had incurred his displeasure. It rejoiced in its scathing commentaries, and styled itself as "the terror of bad actors, brainless authors, and venal managers."23
This emphasis on the theatrical world within a publication of this type may seem somewhat incongruous today, but at the time it was by no means unusual. As Anne Humphreys has pointed out, "though drama would seem outside the journalism label, in the early Victorian period it was not so obviously separate. Minor comedy was closely connected to popular journalism of the period in subject,