http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/127210690X/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AOOXX1K/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1110299397/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1446096181/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1290946124/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JSR4JYO/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0008582TI/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1361252200/?tag=2022091-20
critic journalist art collector
Francis Welch Crowninshield was born on June 24, 1872 in Paris, France, to the Americans Frederic Crowninshield and his wife, the former Helen Suzette Fairbanks, what he called "poor but good" members of the well-heeled Boston Brahmin Crowninshield family. His father was a painter and served for two years as director of the American Academy in Rome.
Crowninshield was educated in New York City where one of his fellow students was Condé Nast. It was the beginning of a life-long friendship. He also attended University of Rome.
Like his father, Frank had a strong interest in painting and he eventually became art critic of The Century Magazine. During this period he promoted the work of modern artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jules Pascin, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He also purchased some of their work and these were later sold at a large profit.
In 1909 Condé Nast purchased a small society magazine called Vogue. He employed Crowninshield as editor and over the next few years he turned it into the country's main fashion and lifestyle magazine. It was also published in several European cities including London and Paris and it became a highly profitable aspect of Nast's growing magazine empire.
Nast also decided to establish a new magazine, Vanity Fair. He asked Crowninshield for advice. He replied: "Your magazine should cover the things people talk about... Parties, the arts, sports, theatre, humor, and so forth." Nast realized that Crowinshield was the best man to edit the new magazine that was launched in January 1914.
Crowninshield developed a reputation for identifying good writers. In 1916 he published the first poems of Dorothy Parker. Two years later she replaced P.G. Woodhouse as the magazine's theatre critic. Other members of staff at the time included Donald Ogden Stewart, Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood and Helen Brown Norden. Crowninshield also accepted the poems, short-stories and articles from some of the most exciting young writers in the 1920s. This included Alexander Woollcott, Aldous Huxley, Edmund Wilson, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Ferenc Molnár, Djuna Barnes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Noël Coward and Thomas Wolfe. By 1917 the magazine had a circulation of 90,000.
In 1919 Crowninshield began taking lunch with a group of writers in the dining room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. This group eventually became known as the Algonquin Round Table.
Vanity Fair published more pages of advertisements than any other American magazine. As a result Crowninshield was very keen not to upset those who helped finance the magazine. Parker developed a reputation for making harsh comments in her reviews and on 12th January 1920 she was sacked by Crowninshield.
Robert E. Sherwood and Robert Benchley both resigned over the sacking.
In 1921 Crowninshield moved in with Condé Nast. Crowninshield met Clare Boothe in 1929. At the interview he asked her to come back in a week's time with 100 suggestions suitable for publication in Vanity Fair. On the result of this exercise he gave her a job on the magazine.
Vanity Fair suffered during the Great Depression from falling advertising revenue. Condé Nast announced in December 1935 that the magazine would be merged with Vogue (circulation 156,000) as of the March 1936 issue.
Frank Crowninshield died on 28th December, 1947.
Frank Crowninshield was a prominent editor thanks to whom the magazine Vanity Fair may be regarded as the most clever, satirical, sophisticated, and artistically daring magazine of its era. In addition to being a well-respected editor and literary scout, Crowninshield was also known as an avid art collector and was a popular figure in New York's aesthetic and social circles.
Quotations:
"... not talking about things she doesn't understand to people who do or about things she does to people who don't."
"Vanity Fair has but two major articles in its editorial creed: first, to believe in the progress and promise of American life, and, second, to chronicle that progress cheerfully, truthfully, and entertainingly."
"We Americans are mildly interested, of course, in reading about the discovery of radium by Madame Curie, but what we really yearn to know is the name of the uncommemorated French female who first mixed a sauce bearnaise."
"My interest in society - at times so pronounced that the word snob comes a little to mind - derives from the fact that I like an immense number of things which society, money, and position bring in their train: painting, tapestries, rare books, smart dresses, dances, gardens, country houses, correct cuisine, and pretty women."
"Young men and young women, full of courage, originality, and genius, are everywhere to be met with."
"What Marie Antoinette was to eighteenth-century France, Mary Pickford is to twentieth-century America."
"The only perfect climate is bed."
Perhaps Crowninshield's greatest gift was his insightful ability to recognize - and convince others to recognize - up-and-coming new talents.
Crowninshield never married.
