 | Vanity Fair magazine: Encyclopedia II - Vanity Fair magazine - History
Vanity Fair magazine - History
The first magazine bearing the name Vanity Fair appeared in New York, as a humorous weekly, from 1860 to 1863. A British weekly Vanity Fair magazine began publication in 1868 by Thomas Gibson Bowles. Subtitled "A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares", it offered its Victorian and Edwardian era readership articles on fashion, current events, reviews of the theatre, new books, reports on social events, and the latest scandals, together with serialized fiction, word games, and other trivia.
However, the magazine was perhaps best known for its caricatures. More than two thousand of these caricatures appeared, of subjects that included artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, soldiers and scholars. Produced by an international group of artists, the illustrations are considered the chief cultural legacy of the magazine and form a pictorial record of the period. Among the artists who contributed illustrations were Max Beerbohm, Sir Leslie Ward (who signed his work "Spy"), the Italians Carlo Pellegrini (known as "Ape") and Liborio Prosperi ("Lib"), the French artist James Jacques Tissot, and the American Thomas Nast.
After merging with Dress magazine in 1913 and temporarily losing its name, the first issue of Vanity Fair was published in New York City in January of 1914. It achieved great popularity under the ownership of publisher Condé Nast and editor Frank Crowninshield.
In 1919 Robert Benchley was tapped to become managing editor. He joined Dorothy Parker, who had come to the magazine from Vogue, and was the staff drama critic. Benchley hired future playwright Robert E. Sherwood, who had recently returned from World War I. The trio were among the original members of the Algonquin Round Table, which met at the Algonquin Hotel, on the same West 44th Street block as Condé Nast's offices.
Starting in 1925 Vanity Fair competed with The New Yorker as the American establishment's top culture chronicle. It contained writing by Thomas Wolfe, T.S. Eliot and P.G. Wodehouse, theatre criticisms by Dorothy Parker, and photographs by Edward Steichen; Claire Boothe Luce was its editor for some time.
However, the magazine was not a commercial success; it reportedly made a profit in only one of its 22 years under Nast, and never sold more than 99,000 copies. It became a casualty of the Great Depression, and in 1936 Vanity Fair ceased publication.
Other related archives1860, 1863, 1868, 1936, 1974, 1980s, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, A-List, Academy Awards, Algonquin Hotel, Algonquin Round Table, American, Annie Leibovitz, British, Carlo Pellegrini, Claire Boothe Luce, Condé Nast, Condé Nast Publications, Deep Throat, Dorothy Parker, E. Graydon Carter, Edward Steichen, Edwardian, Glamour photographers, Great Depression, Herb Ritts, James Jacques Tissot, Leslie Ward, Lifestyle magazines, Mario Testino, Max Beerbohm, May 2005, New York, New York City, P.G. Wodehouse, Richard Nixon, Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, Si Newhouse, T.S. Eliot, The Insider, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The New Yorker, Thomas Nast, Thomas Wolfe, Tina Brown, U.S. President, UK, United States magazines, Victorian, Vogue, W. Mark Felt, Washington Post, Watergate, caricatures, celebrities, editor-in-chief, establishment's, exposé, jet-set, lawsuit, libelled, magazine, tobacco industry, word games
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
