Frank Crowninshield

Francis Welch Crowninshield (June 24, 1872 – December 28, 1947) was an American journalist and art and theater critic best known for developing and editing the magazine Vanity Fair for 21 years, making it a pre-eminent literary journal.

In 1914, Crowninshield – who was considered "the most cultivated, elegant, and endearing man in publishing, if not Manhattan"[4] – was hired by his friend Condé Nast to become editor of the new Vanity Fair.

Crowninshield immediately dropped the magazine's fashion elements and helped turn the periodical into the preeminent literary voice of sophisticated American society, a position it held until 1935.

Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, Ferenc Molnár, Gertrude Stein, and Djuna Barnes, all appeared in the issue of July 1923, while some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's earliest works were published in the magazine.

Crowninshield bought Dorothy Parker's first published poem for the magazine, and it was also the first periodical in the United States to print reproductions of works by artists such as Picasso and Matisse.