Vanity Fair (magazines)

Vanity Fair has been the title of at least five magazines, including an 1859–63 American publication, an 1868–1914 British publication, an unrelated 1902–04 New York magazine, and a 1913–36 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 1847–48 novel of the same name by William Makepeace Thackeray.

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 William Allen Stephens and Henry Louis Stephens. The magazine's stature may be indicated by its contributors, which included Thomas Bailey Aldrich, William Dean Howells, Fitz-James O'Brien and Charles Farrar Browne.

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 such as "Jehu Junior", but contributors included Lewis Carroll, Willie Wilde, P. G. Wodehouse, Jessie Pope and Bertram Fletcher Robinson (editor: June 1904 – October 1906).

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