Vanity Fair started as a scandal sheet but was lifted above others of its kind by the acid skills of its founder-editor. The coming and goings of the royal family, great satire, news of the week, fashions of the day, politicians, sportsmen, literary figures, artists, men of the legal profession were all in Vanity Fair, published each week from 1869 to 1914 . It first appeared, without illustrations and sub-titled ‘A Weekly Show of Political, Social and Literary Wares’.
It made steady but unremarkable progress until the 12th issue when it was announced that the next issue would include,
"“A FULL PAGED CARTOON of an entirely novel character PRINTED IN CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY"
The price was sixpence. So great was the success of the cartoon-which was of Disraeli and signed ‘Singe’-that the price increased to a shilling; the historic series was launched. “Ape” was the pseudonym under which Carlo Pelligrini was to become famous. The other two names associated with Vanity Fair are Jehr Junior, the non de plume under which the paper’s first proprietor, Thomas Gibson Bowles, wrote the biographical notes of each week’s subject, ‘Man of the Day’; and Leslie Ward-’Spy‘ - who joined the staff in 1873 and who was responsible, with ‘Ape’, for the majority of the caricatures throughout its history. Ward was to continue for forty years, long after the other two, and receive a knighthood.
For the first quarter of a century of its existence the irreverent seized Vanity Fair as soon as it appeared on the news-stands while the famous hastened to discover whether they were its subject of its attention. Pelligrini could be savage in his delineation of the pompous or the stupid. Bowles was a merciless writer in support of his original editorial undertaking to ‘display the vanities of the week’.