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Our Keynotes
Our Keynotes
Dr Patrick Leary
Historian of the Victorian press and author of The Punch Brotherhood. Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London (2010)
"The Education of Henry Silver"
Abstract—In this talk we will take a tour of the most remarkable document in the Punch Archive: Henry Silver’s “diary” of the talk at the Sunday dinner meetings of the staff and proprietors of Punch. Almost everything we know about the week-to-week operation of the magazine at mid-century comes from this unassuming notebook with its torn, fading cover and its pages and pages of tiny scribbles. Central to that operation was the sometimes vigorous debate about the theme and form of the vastly influential full-page political cartoon – the Big Cut – and we will explore the intimate and sometimes contentious connections between those discussions and the cartoons that eventually appeared. But there is much more to Silver’s diary, for it represents one of the few sustained records of actual middle-class conversation that have come down to us from the period. And as for the self-effacing Henry Silver himself? Something of a mystery, as we’ll see, but one worth a closer look.
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Professor Julia Thomas FLSW, FRSA
School of English, Communication and Philosophy / Ysgol Saesneg, Cyfathrebu ac Athroniaeth
Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd
'In Search of Punch's Pocket Book: A Digital Treasure Hunt'
Abstract—Join me on a treasure hunt as we try to discover digital images of, and from, Punch’s Pocket Book. On the way, we will reflect on the value and significance of different ways of making nineteenth-century illustrations searchable online so that they can be retrieved by users. We will look behind the scenes (or screens) of digital archives and explore the advantages and disadvantages of methods for image searchability, including manual ‘tagging’ or marking up pictures, crowdsourcing, and the latest computer vision and AI tools. These methods play an increasingly large part in how we research and engage with historical illustrations. They will be analysed not as mechanical or neutral activities, but as critical interventions, which involve actively interpreting these images and rendering them visible or invisible.
As with any event, our treasure hunt will involve a risk assessment. As we move from a digital to an AI culture, what are the potential pitfalls in terms of access to and retrievability of nineteenth-century illustrations? The paper argues for the vital importance of Punch’s Pocket Book Archive in this new environment. This project will make it possible for us to find our treasure.
