Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Burnand, Francis Cowley
BURNAND, Sir FRANCIS COWLEY (1836-1917), playwright, author, and editor of Punch, was born 29 November 1836, the only son of Francis Burnand, a London stockbroker, by his wife, Emma Cowley. Through his mother he claimed descent from the poetess and dramatist, Hannah Cowley [q.v.]. After three years at Eton, he matriculated in 1854 at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he devoted himself mainly to theatricals, founding the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club, usually known as the A.D.C. It was at first intended that he should read for the bar; but the fact that a living, purchased by one of the family, had become vacant, made it seem advisable that he should take orders. He accordingly went to Cuddesdon Theological College to prepare for ordination, but a further acquaintance with theological matters led him to accept the Roman Catholic faith (December 1858), and, contrary to the hopes of Cardinal Manning, to seek in a secular direction a means of livelihood. He was called to the bar in 1862; but the attraction of the footlights set him on the road which was to lead to the editorship of Punch. When he shocked Manning by saying that he had no vocation for the priesthood, but that he fancied he had a vocation for the stage, he was only speaking the truth. The stage had always called to him. But he had at this time no vocation for writing, no inner call to express himself by means either of play or book. Such vocation, as it happened, was not required. He was to be playwright, not dramatist. Gay good-humour, agility of mind, a facility which, however, spared no industry, were equipment enough for the theatrical world he set out to conquer. It was an easy-going world in those days, with no heights for the young to scale more inspiring than the well-timed burlesque of a popular drama or the skilful naturalization of a popular French farce. Before he had finished with it, Burnand had more than a hundred such burlesques and adaptations to his name. Of these Black-eyed Susan (1866) and The Colonel (1881) were the most successful; and if they are not destined for immortality, it can at least be claimed for them that they survived triumphantly the origins from which they sprang.
Contemporaneously with these plays went on his work for the lighter periodicals of his day, especially Fun, which he helped. Henry James Byron [q.v.] to found; and his first contribution to Punch in 1868 was followed shortly afterwards by an invitation to join the staff. His work for Punch was more original, though in this again, for the most part, he was happier when somebody else had provided him with a point of support. With the exception of his best-known book, Happy Thoughts (1866), one of the most popular series which has ever appeared in Punch, his burlesques of other writers (especially the New History of Sandford and Merton, 1872, and Strapmore by ‘Weeder’, 1878) were his chief contribution to the humour of his time. This was a time when ‘humorists’ were not only labelled as such, but were qualified inevitably as ‘genial’. To be genial, in fact, was almost enough. For the rest, italics and exclamation-marks were recognized badges of wit, periphrasis was in itself jocular, and an appropriate quotation from Dickens was proof to the most sceptical that the writer was a jolly good fellow. In this school the pun naturally held high esteem. There was no mistaking a pun; it was, from the fact of its being there, a genial contribution to the entertainment. Burnand contributed much in this line; and if a greatdeal of it was no more than a formal acknowledgement of his reputation as a humorist, there were to be found here and there real flashes of brilliance. One much-quoted saying of his was in answer to the charge that Punch, in his time, was not so good as it used to be—‘It never was’.
There is no doubt that under Burnand’s editorship, which began in 1880 and lasted twenty-six years, the reputation of Punch increased considerably. It grew less intolerant of opinions with which it disagreed; it became more catholic in its appeal; it began to discard its air of a Family Joke and aspired to be the National Institution which it has since been proclaimed. Yet he always kept for it a note of irresponsibility; and although this irresponsibility has lost most of its humour for a later generation, it has left behind it a pleasant feeling that the editor (as the editor of such a paper should) enjoyed his work, and that even as the controller of ‘the most famous humorous paper in the world’ he refused to take himself too seriously.
Burnand was twice married: first, in 1860 to Cecilia Victoria (who died in 1870), daughter of James Ranoe; by her he had five sons and two daughters; secondly, in 1874, to Rosina, widow of Paysan Jones, of Liverpool, by whom he had two sons and four daughters. In 1902 he was knighted, the first writer on Punch to receive that distinction, and in 1906 he retired from the editorship. He died at Ramsgate 21 April 1917, at the age of eighty.
[F. C. Burnand, Records and Reminiscences, 1903; M. H. Spielmann, The History of Punch, 1895; private information.]