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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The Coronation of the Emperor and Empress, 2 December 1804

Gilgamesh to Gaga

By John Tresch

Fame machines have always found ways to conjure up and emanate glory, to magnify the power of kings and gods.

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Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

Map

Hall of Famers

Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

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1844 | Paris

Lisztomania

Franz Liszt gets the ladies in a tizzy.More

c. 1950 | New York City

Edmund Wilson Regrets

Killing a few birds with one stone.More

c. 420 | Syria

Performance Art

Edward Gibbon sizes up Simeon Stylites.More

Charts & Graphs

Cause Célèbre

Celebrities and their charities.

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Black and white photograph of American writer and exponent of Transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Italian Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas.

Image of Japanese poet and essayist Yoshida Kenko.

Portrait of English wit and poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester with monkey.

Engraving of Roman author and administrator Pliny the Younger.

Portrait of English writer Mary Wollstonecraft.

Painted portrait of second President of the United States John Adams.

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

—Martial, c. 86

Charles Dickens & John Lennon

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