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. Vanity Fair was notably a fictitious place ruled by Beelzebub, in the book Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan.
as caricatured in Vanity Fair of 1899.
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 (including Winston Churchill), 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. A complete list of the caricatures is currently under construction. The famous English publication continued to be published until February 5, 1914. See Vanity Fair caricatures.
