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Abstract
Vogue was one of the most influential fashion magazines of the twentieth century. In the 1920s its British edition, launched in 1916, became a focus for various forms of queer visual and cultural expression. The origins of the related ‘amusing style’, which delighted in camp display, can be traced to the romantic and artistic collaboration between the American artist George Wolfe Plank and the British writer E.F. Benson during the First World War. The illustrations that Plank produced for Benson’s book of satirical sketches of life in London’s high society, The Freaks of Mayfair (1916), shed light on the camp images that Plank designed for the covers of both the American and British editions of the magazine. Therefore, Plank can be understood to have played a key role in the development of queer visual culture during the early twentieth century.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Garrity, ‘Selling culture.’
2. Reed, ‘Design for (Queer) Living’, 377.
3. Reed, ‘Design for (Queer) Living’, 396.
4. Pender, ‘“Modernist Madonnas”’, 520.
5. Reed, ‘A Vogue’, 57–58.
6. Reed, ‘A Vogue’, 59.
7. Sontag, ‘Notes on “Camp”’. For more recent studies that take camp seriously, and often positively, as a creative, cultural form see Bergman, Camp Grounds; Meyer, The Politics; Harris, ‘The Death’; and Cleto, Camp.
8. Castle, ‘Some Notes’, 25.
9. Pellegrini, ‘After Sontag’, 184.
10. Extensive efforts have been made to trace the owner of the Estate of George Plank without success. Images by Plank are therefore reproduced as orphan works. Anyone with information about the ownership of his Estate should contact the author.
11. Packer, The Art of Vogue, 16–17.
12. Evans, ‘Jean Patou’s’, 259.
13. Clark, ‘“Cleverly Drawn”’.
14. Berman, ‘Whistler and the Printed Page’, 68.
15. Thackeray, The Snobs of England.
16. Benson, The Freaks, 202.
17. Benson, The Freaks, 210.
18. Benson, The Freaks, 33.
19. Benson, The Freaks, 34.
20. Janes, Oscar Wilde.
21. Downend, ‘Benson’, 54.
22. Janes, Visions, 145–7 and Goldhill, A Very Queer Family.
23. Basu, ‘Benson’, unpaginated.
24. As discussed in Vickers, ‘Introduction’, unpaginated.
25. Kiernan, Frivolity Unbound, 86.
26. Kiernan, Frivolity Unbound, 78–80.
27. Benson, As We Were, 210.
28. Benson, As We Were, 294.
29. Benson, As We Were, 294.
30. Masters, The Life, 287.
31. Benson, As We Were, 295.
32. Masters, The Life, 251.
33. Masters, The Life, 251.
34. Series II, box 8, folder 127; see also Blatchley, The Bookplates.
35. The George Plank Papers are in the Beinecke Library, Yale University. His correspondence is classified under YCAL MSS 28. The following end-notes provide the sub-references; in this first case, series 1, box 1, folder 13.
36. Series 1, box 1, folder 6.
37. Series 1, box 1, folder 14.
38. Series 1, box 1, folder 15.
39. Series 1, box 1, folder 16.
40. Benson, Final Edition, 142.
41. Series 1, box 1, folder 15.
42. Series 1, box 1, folder 15.
43. Series 1, box 1, folder 6.
44. Series 1, box 1, folder 16.
45. Series 1, box 1, folder 16.
46. Series 1, box 1, folder 6.
47. Series 1, box 1, folder 5.
48. Series 1, box 1, folder 17.
49. Series 1, box 1, folder 6.
50. Series 1, box 1, folder 17.
51. Series 1, box 1, folder 5.
52. Series 1, box 2, folder 19.
53. Series 1, box 2, folder 19.
54. Series 1, box 2, folder 23.
55. Series 1, box 1, folder 16.
56. Discussed in Janes, Picturing, 4–8.
57. Sedgwick, Epistemology, 71.
58. Benson, The Freaks, 39.
59. Anon., ‘What They Read’ (1918), 74.
60. Series 1, box 1, folder 5.
61. Adrian, ‘Introduction’, xiii.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Dominic Janes
Dominic Janes has MAs from Oxford University in History and from Birkbeck College, London University in Education, and a PhD from Cambridge. In addition to a spell as a lecturer at Lancaster University, he has been a research fellow at London and Cambridge universities. He then worked as a director of studies for international students before moving to Birkbeck, to UAL, and then to Keele, where he is now Professor of Modern History. He has lived in several countries including Malawi, Iraq, Indonesia and the United States. His most recent books are Picturing the Closet and Visions of Queer Martyrdom.