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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Portrait of Lord Byron

A Public Man

By Andrew McConnell Stott

The sheer gravitational weight of Lord Byron’s fame had the power to distort everything around it.

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Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

Map

Hall of Famers

Famous adventurers, entertainers, geniuses, and outlaws.

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c. 109 | Rome

Intimations of Immortality

How to live forever. More

c. 1450 | France

The Old A-List

François Villon’s ballad of dead ladies.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

On Tour

On the lecture circuit.

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Black and white photograph of English writer Virginia Woolf.

English essayist, poet, and dramatist Joseph Addison.

American songwriters Burt Bacharach & Hal David.

Portrait of British poet Lord Byron.

American television critic Emily Nussbaum.

Black and white photograph of a young Mark Twain with dark hair.

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

—Martial, c. 86

Arrian & Matt Damon

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Walk on the Wild Side

By Virginia Woolf

On the lives passing through Kew Gardens on a summer day. More

DÉjÀ Vu

Dance Stance Revolution

2022:

Brazilian blocos ignore ban on Carnival celebrations.

1576:

Italian plague patients ignore ban on dance parties.

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The World in Time

Olivier Zunz

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville. More

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