The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Celebrity

Volume IV, Number 1 | winter 2011

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Preamble

Dancing with the Stars

By Lewis H. Lapham

The vanity of princes is an old story; so is the wish for kings and the gazing into the pool of Narcissus.

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Vanishing Act

By Paul Collins

Barbara Newhall Follett was a prodigy who transfixed the literary world—and then vanished.

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Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

Map

Hall of Famers

Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

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1970 | Minneapolis

You Reap What You Sow

John Berryman on poetic fame. More

c. 109 | Rome

Intimations of Immortality

How to live forever. More

1861 | Amherst

Anonym

I’m Nobody! Who are you?More

Charts & Graphs

Failsafe

Insurance policies of the stars.

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British surgeon Frederick Treves.

Photograph of American artist Andy Warhol.

Image of French poet François Villon.

American assassin John Hinckley Jr.

Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio.

English essayist, poet, and dramatist Joseph Addison.

English writer Christopher Marlowe.

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BC

Arrian & Matt Damon

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