Puck Christmas

Harrison Fisher's Christmas cover for *Puck* stages an allegory of the magazine's own editorial power. The cherubic figure of Puck—nude save a blue jacket, the traditional sprite of the publication's masthead—stands atop a small table beside a large box camera on a tripod, dangling marionette figures of well-dressed gentlemen. Across an ornate carpet reclines an elegantly gowned woman in yellow satin, lorgnette in hand, coolly appraising the puppets on offer. The camera implies that *Puck* captures and controls public figures; the woman, composed and choosy, represents a discerning readership or perhaps Society itself. Fisher renders the interior in a lush Orientalist domestic mode typical of 1890s illustration—richly patterned rugs, columns, draped fabrics—signaling fashionable affluence without satirical edge. The cover price, twenty-five cents, appears bottom-left.