1960 Vanity Fair Book - Cavalcade of the 1920s 1930s Cleveland Amory & Bradlee

This book, published in New York in 1960, is an anthology of Vanity Fair, the Condé Nast magazine that ran from 1913 to 1936. Edited by Cleveland Amory and Frederic Bradlee, with Katharine Tweed as picture editor, it gathers 141 articles, short stories, poems and features and 544 pictures across 327 pages. Amory called Vanity Fair America's most memorable magazine, and the subtitle, A Cavalcade of the 1920s and 1930s, describes its scope: two decades of literature, theatre, Hollywood, art, music, sport, public life and society, as the magazine recorded them.

Condé Nast launched the magazine in September 1913 as Dress and Vanity Fair, combining it with a fashion title, and after four issues shortened the name to Vanity Fair. From 1914 its editor was Frank Crowninshield, a supporter of the 1913 Armory Show, who made it a showcase for modern art, literature and humour alongside society and style. Its contributors included Dorothy Parker, whom Crowninshield drew from Vogue, Robert Benchley, T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. As a sister title to Vogue, Vanity Fair helped define the sophisticated, urban taste of the Condé Nast world.

Vanity Fair flourished in the 1920s, capturing the confidence, wit and modernism of the Jazz Age. The Great Depression made it unprofitable, and in December 1935 Condé Nast announced that it would be merged into Vogue from the March 1936 issue. By 1960 the magazine had been closed for almost a quarter of a century, and this anthology presented the interwar years through the magazine's own pages, in the voices and images of those who had lived them.

The book gives a sense of the magazine year by year, selecting its best articles, stories, poems and features alongside photographs, paintings and caricatures. With 544 pictures, it reflects the importance of the image to Vanity Fair, which published leading photographers and caricaturists alongside its writers. The physical book, with an orange cloth spine, papered boards and gilt lettering, is a substantial volume, made to be kept and returned to. Its dust jacket, now worn, was the reader's first introduction to its contents.

Original issues of the 1913–1936 Vanity Fair are now scarce, and this anthology remains one of the most accessible ways to read the magazine's writers and see its images together. Condé Nast revived the title in 1983, which has kept attention on its original run. This copy is in acceptable condition, with a worn and torn dust jacket and edge wear: a reader's copy rather than a fine collector's example, suited to those who want to read and use the book.