‘We are Amused’: Victorian Humour in the Digital Age

This conference examines the intersection between nineteenth-century humour, under all its definitions and expressions, and the digital. In line with the ongoing Punch's Pocket Book Archive project, which seeks to create a fully searchable open-access archive from a complete collection of Punch's Pocket Book – some thirty-nine volumes representing approximately 5,000 pages– the conference will investigate the migration of jokes, squibs, spoofs and parodies, verbal and visual, from the pages of comic periodicals to 21st century screens, opening new lines of inquiry into the distinctiveness of computerized Victorian humour.