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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1846 | Copenhagen

Tough Crowd

Taking Kierkegaard to task.More

c. 2100 BC | Mesopotamia

Press Release

Ur-Nammu, not lacking in confidence.More

c. 1680 | Oxfordshire

As False as Common Fame

“There’s not a thing on earth that I can name so foolish and so false as common fame.”More

Charts & Graphs

Image Is Everything

Celebrities make a legal claim for their slogans, voices, and likenesses.

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American assassin John Hinckley Jr.

American critic, poet, and resident of Norway Bruce Bawer.

American writer Philip Roth.

American poet John Berryman.

French critic Roland Barthes.

English poet, novelist, and classicist Robert Graves.

British historian Edward Gibbon.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.

—Marilyn Monroe, 1962

Photograph of English novelist Charles Dickens.

Missing contributor image silhouette

Charles Dickens & John Lennon

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