Smoke at VANITY FAIR

John Bunyan

An interesting source for the name of a magazine

https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/01/oneclickhistory

In a 2008 article

VINTAGE V.F. SEPTEMBER 2004 Vanity Fair: The One-Click History

JANUARY 14, 2008 BY DAVID FRIEND

“In 2008, Vanity Fair celebrates its 95th anniversary—and its 25th as a relaunched publication. To showcase the photographic heritage of the magazine, London’s National Portrait Gallery has mounted an exhibition, “Vanity Fair Portraits, 1913–2008” (opening February 14, 2008), which will travel to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, in Edinburgh, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery of Canberra, Australia. In the fall of 2008, the magazine will produce a special anniversary issue and a hardcover book, Vanity Fair: The Portraits.

“Vanity Fair” originally meant “a place or scene of ostentation or empty, idle amusement and frivolity”—a reference to the decadent fair in John Bunyan’s 1678 book, The Pilgrim’s Progress. By the 19th century, however, author William Makepeace Thackeray made “Vanity Fair” his own, borrowing the term to christen his widely read 1848 satirical novel, which was serialized at the time in Britain’s Punch magazine.”