Articles from Vanity Fair Magazine
Here is a mock society page that sought to belittle all the goings on among the sweet young things at Newport
A large and fashionably dressed group of Newport’s ‘creme de la creme’ were observed on burning sands. Mixed bathing was indulged in…Many succulent bits of gossip and spicey rumor have been overheard in the ladies annex during the noon dressing hour and right merry time was had by all.
This cartoon pokes fun at the high cost of being charitable. Throughout much of World War One there was always the problem of what to do with the growing number of refugees and orphans -and the answer was never cheap. This drawing reveals a different Rea Irvin, but the drawing style for which he would be remembered is clearly emerging.
The famed Conde Nast illustrator from days of old, Ann Fish, assumed the nom de guerre, Hello in order to impart to her well-fed audience the terror of German Prussianism. In this cartoon, she illustrated what a German invasion of Manhattan would look like.
A piece of VANITY FAIR social satire concerning the returning American veterans of the World War I and how the industrial slaughter had changed them (as if such a thing could!).
The following five page article was written by the World War One poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967), in an attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty….
One of Conde Nast’s most popular magazines reviewed D.W. Griffith’s film, The Birth of a Nation and gave a somewhat balanced account of the production. The journalist clearly recognized that the movie was unfair to the Negro yet remarkable for it’s photography.
In the early Twenties there were a good many social changes which men had to struggle to understand; among them was the Modern Woman. The Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863 – 1939) attempted to do just that for the editors of Vanity Fair.
‘Don’t expect us’, she says to you, disconsolate male, ‘don’t expect us to be like the old-fashioned girls who went to church, and did the laundry, and looked up to their husbands as to their God.’
The following is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888 – 1965). With much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:
We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….
What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.
Celebrated columnist Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) wrote this piece to mark the end of the Wilson administration (1912 – 1920) and usher-in that of Warren G. Harding (1865 – 1923).
Unlike the ink-slingers in ages to come, Lippmann had pleasant remarks to make regarding his presidency:
And I firmly believe that the historian who examines the state papers of Wilson up to November, 1918, will say, not only that they are in an unbroken line from Washington’s Farewell Address, but that it required something very like genius under the pressure and in the fog of a world war, to keep that line intact.
Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death.
Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.
With the publishing of the first part of his autobiography, Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) got some attention in the American press. This small column first appeared in VANITY FAIR magazine praising his ability as a genuine artist.
