The "Smart Magazines"

From Society and Comedy.

A new class of magazines began to publish during the 1910s, which writer George Douglas has dubbed the "Smart Magazines." The principal examples from this era were The Smart Set and Vanity Fair. Later additions to the fold included The New Yorker and Esquire. They grew out of two separate strains in magazine publishing: the urban society journal and the humor magazine. Urban society journals published news about the "Four Hundred" high-society families, their parties and charities, their debutantes, weddings, and travels. Humor magazines such as Life (not to be confused with a later publication by that name), Punchy and Judge published satire, cartoons, and comedic fiction. The "Smart Magazines" catered to an elite audience but set out to amuse, entertain, and provoke, to be the fodder of conversation at parties.

Vanity Fair.

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[The entire page is 844 words long]

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