Vanity Fair (British magazine)

Common card · No. 391960

Vanity Fair was a British weekly magazine that was published from 1868 to 1914. Founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles in London, the magazine included articles on fashion, theatre, current events as well as word games and serial fiction. The cream of the period's "society magazines", it is best known for its witty prose and caricatures of famous people of Victorian and Edwardian society, including artists, athletes, royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, business people and scholars. Taking its title from Thackeray's popular satire on early 19th-century British society, Vanity Fair was not immediately successful and struggled with competition from rival publications. Bowles then promised his readers "Some Pictorial Wares of an entirely novel character", and on 30 January 1869, a full-page caricature of Benjamin Disraeli appeared. This was the first of over 2,300 caricatures to be published. According to the National Portrait Gallery in London, "Vanity Fair's illustrations, instantly...

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