Vanity Fair (magazine, historical)
Vanity Fair has been the title of four notable magazines: an 1859-1863 American publication, an English publication, and an unrelated American publication edited by
Condé Nast, with a later revived publication.
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.
1868-1914
A
British weekly
Vanity Fair magazine began publication in
1868, founded by
Thomas Gibson Bowles, the grandfather of the
Mitford sisters. Subtitled "A Weekly Show of Political, Social, and Literary Wares," it offered its
Victorian and
Edwardian readership articles on fashion, current events, reviews of the theatre, new books, reports on 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. However, the magazine is today 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.
The famous English publication continued to be published until February 5, 1914.
