From Publishers Weekly
The five "smart magazines" whose fortunes are chronicled here-- Vanity Fair , New Yorker , Life , Esquire and Smart Set --were designed, at least superficially, for social elites but reached out to a sizable audience. Sharing a community of talent, these magazines attracted E. B. White, O. Henry, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Edmund Wilson, H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other literary upstarts, disaffected eccentrics and sardonic castaways. The magazines evolved drastically. Vanity Fair was launched in 1913 as a voice for the avant-garde. Life , begun as a humor weekly in 1883, was sold to Time Inc. in 1936 for its foray into photo journalism. Douglas, an English professor at the University of Illinois, brings to life each magazine's reigning personalities and politics in a delightful, gossipy collective portrait that evokes a journalistic era when substance counted as much as slickness. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This historical account, which is full of anecdotes and cultural details and which reads as if it was written for the very magazines it describes, traces the origins, development, and power of these urban society magazines during the first 50 years of this century. What was there that encouraged their growth and influence as a standard for popular literary and humor periodicals? Who were the founders and the editors who shaped the standards? The author, an English professor at the University of Illinois, devotes an interesting chapter to each magazine (except the old Life), highlighting each periodical's unique personality. As it is overloaded with specifics that might not interest the general reader, this title is perhaps best for collections focusing on early literary magazines.
- Abraham Z. Bass, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Abraham Z. Bass, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
