Vanity Fair (magazine, historical)
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Vanity Fair has been the title of four notable magazines: an 1859-1863 American publication, an 1868-1914 English publication, and an unrelated 1913-1936 American publication edited by Condé Nast, which was revived in 1983.
Vanity Fair was notably a fictitious place ruled by Beelzebub, in the book Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Later use of the name was influenced by the well-known novel of the same name by William Makepeace Thackeray.
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[edit] 1859-1863
The first magazine bearing the name Vanity Fair appeared in New York, as a humorous weekly, from 1859 to 1863.
The magazine was financed by Frank J. Thompson, and was edited by Louis Henry Stephens, William Allen Stephens, and Henry Louis Stephens.
The magazine's stature is indicated by a list of its contributors, which included Thomas Bailey Aldrich, William Dean Howells, Fitz-James O'Brien, and Charles Farrar Browne.
[edit] 1868-1914
The second Vanity Fair was a British weekly magazine published from 1868 to 1914.
Subtitled "A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares," it was founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles, who aimed to expose the contemporary vanities of Victorian society. The first issue appeared in London on November 7, 1868. It offered its readership articles on fashion, current events, the theatre, books, social events, and the latest scandals, together with serial fiction, word games, and other trivia.
Bowles wrote much of the magazine himself under various pseudonyms, but contributors included Lewis Carroll and William Wilde.
[edit] Caricatures
A full-page, colour lithograph of a contemporary celebrity or dignitary appeared in most issues, and it is for these caricatures that Vanity Fair is best known today. Subjects included artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, soldiers and scholars. More than two thousand of these images appeared, and they are considered the chief cultural legacy of the magazine, forming a pictorial record of the period. They were produced by an international group of artists, including Max Beerbohm, Sir Leslie Ward (who signed his work "Spy"), the Italians Carlo Pellegrini ("Singe" and "Ape") and Libero Prosperi ("Lib"), the French artist James Jacques Tissot, and the American Thomas Nast.
The final issue of Vanity Fair appeared on February 5, 1914.
