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Home › Mentioned in The Fate of Humor in a Time of Civil and Cold War: <cite>Vanity Fair</cite> and Race ›

Mentioned in The Fate of Humor in a Time of Civil and Cold War: <cite>Vanity Fair</cite> and Race

Arnold, George (1834-1865)

Though many details about his early life are in dispute, scholars agree that Arnold was born in New York City and that his father may have been the Reverend George B. Arnold. The family relocated to Illinois and then to Monmouth County, New Jersey where Arnold enjoyed a country upbringing. Though he apprenticed himself to a portrait painter in New York in 1852, Arnold soon determined that literature would be his true calling.

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Greeley, Horace (1811-1872)

Horace Greeley was born in 1811 near Amherst, New Hampshire, to a poor farming family. Though physically feeble, Greeley had an affinity for books and tried for a printing apprenticeship at the age of eleven. He became an apprentice three years later in Vermont, where he learned the business rapidly and sent most of his earnings to his father. Greeley went back to farm life at the age of twenty before going to seek his fortune (Appleton 734). Greeley fostered this rags-to-riches story, claiming to have arrived in New York City in 1831 with only twenty-five dollars in his pocket.

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Leland, Charles Godfrey (1824-1903)

Born in Philadelphia, Charles Godfrey Leland Leland received his early schooling in Massachusetts and Philadelphia, where Bronson Alcott was one of his teachers. He contributed short poems to newspapers before the age of fifteen. After graduating from Princeton in 1846, Leland traveled to Europe and spent two years studying in Germany. In 1848 he participated in uprisings in Paris before returning to Philadelphia to study law.

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Newell, Robert Henry (1836-1901)

Born and raised in New York City, Robert Henry Newell entered the world of journalism at age twenty-two. His submissions to various periodicals “achieved immediate recognition” and brought him a job offer from the New York Sunday Mercury. During the Civil War, Newell wrote the “Orpheus C. Kerr papers, originally initiated in the form of Washington correspondence to the Mercury . . .

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Shaw, Henry Wheeler (1818-1885)

Henry Wheeler Shaw was one of the "brightest and most popular humorous men of the day" (J. Derby 239). He was best known as a talented "humorist, a homespun philospher [sic], and a conscious literary artist. One of his chief strengths was originality; in such a graphic epigram as ’when a feller gits a goin down hil, it dus seem as tho evry thing had bin greased for the okashun,’ even the deliberate misspellings fade into the background behind the compelling image" (Kesterson). At age seventeen, Shaw began a ten year exploration of western portions of the United States.

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Stephens, William

William Allan Stephens was a co-founder of Vanity Fair. Henry Clapp’s obituary mentions that "when the Saturday Press went the way of all journals that are too smart to live, Mr. Clapp, with Mr. Stevens [sic] and others, started the best imitation of Punch that we have had in this country-- Vanity Fair. Around this nucleus gathered the circle so widely known as ’The Bohemians,’ of whom Mr. Clapp was the head and exponent" (“Obituary” 7).

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Ward, Artemus (1834-1867)

Born in small-town New England, Charles Browne began his career as a young contributor to the Boston Carpet Bag, a humor magazine, and later at Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer he adopted the persona of circus showman Artemus Ward. As Ward, he began writing letters from this fictional character whose travels inspired social commentaries, satires, and burlesques.

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