For the magazine’s centenary celebration, an anthology of
pieces from the early golden age of Vanity Fair
In honor of the 100th anniversary of Vanity Fair magazine,
Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells celebrates the
publication’s astonishing early catalogue of writers, with
works by Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, P. G. Wodehouse, Jean
Cocteau, Colette, Gertrude Stein, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Sherwood Anderson, Robert Benchley, Langston Hughes—and many
others. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter introduces these
fabulous pieces written between 1913 and 1936, when the
magazine published a murderers’ row of the world’s leading
literary lights.
Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells features great
writers on great topics, including F. Scott Fitzgerald on
what a magazine should be, Clarence Darrow on equality, D.
H. Lawrence on women, e.e. cummings on Calvin Coolidge, John
Maynard Keynes on the collapse in money value, Thomas Mann
on how films move the human heart, Alexander Woollcott on
Harpo Marx, Carl Sandburg on Charlie Chaplin, Djuna Barnes
on James Joyce, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., on Joan Crawford,
and Dorothy Parker on a host of topics ranging from why she
hates actresses to why she hasn’t married.
These essays reflect the rich period of their creation while
simultaneously addressing topics that would be recognizable
in the magazine today, such as how women should navigate
work and home life; our destructive fascination with the
entertainment industry and with professional sports; the
collapse of public faith in the financial industry; and, as
Aldous Huxley asks herein, “What, Exactly, Is Modern?”
Offering readers an inebriating swig from that great
cocktail shaker of the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the
age of Gatsby, Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers, and Swells
showcases unforgettable writers in search of how to live
well in a changing era.