I am karen taylor, Program Director of the general society. The labor, literature and landmark collections are supported in part by public funds from the new City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council. For those of you who may be less familiar with the general society and how many of you here this evening with this be your first visit . Okay. A warm welcome and of course, welcome back to previous attendees. The general society was founded in 1785 by 22 artisans. Today our 234yearold organization continues to serve the peopleof the city of new york. We do this through our cultural and education programs. They include our lecture series which tonights lecture is part of, our general Society Library which will will be celebrating 200 years. Our tuition free Mechanics Institute and the john and mossman lot collection which you are welcome to visit after our talk this evening and that is upstairs. You will find more information on the blue and white postcard on your seats. We have such a wonderful start to this years lectures season and we have the pleasure of welcoming critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who will discuss her biography of conde nast, the publishing legend of vogue and vanity fair and other illustrious publications. I also want to mention if youve not already done so, you will have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book which with this absolutely stunning cover later this evening so please be aware that you have this opportunity and im sure susan would be happy to find the book for you. I also want to mention that cspan are filming this talk tonight so this program will be rebroadcast on book tv and when we get to the q and a portion, i want to remind you that anyone whos asking a question that you can also have the opportunity to be featured on book tv. Born and raised in the United States, miss ronald has lived in england for more than 25 years and has come over especially this week to talk about her book. She is the author of a dangerous woman, hitlers art thief. Heretic creek queen, the pirate queen and shakespeares daughter. It is my considerable pleasure to introduce to you susan ronald. [applause] thank you everybody. I just hope our technical problems are at an end. You may see these little steps there on the bottom. Ive decided to write about conde nast really because i tend to write about power and greed. All the people ive written about before, theres another book which isnt on here, have been powerful people. Some of them have been greedy. Almost all of them have had some sort of brush with the law but after a dangerous woman, about Florence Wolf who was married to that youngest sonof jay gould as many of you will certainly know of , i decided that having written about someone who was incredibly powerful, incredibly devious and also the banker to Herman Goering by the end of the war and never ever was tried for her dastardly deeds, i needed to cleanse myself. I wanted to write about a really good person so i told this to my agent and my publisher and they just kind of looked blankly at me and they said you write about power and greed, how could you write about a nice person , it was my agent who suggested i have a look at the Publishing Industry and i said are there any good guys in publishing . Sure enough, he was right though i decided im going to write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turnofthecentury and going into world war ii, conde nast. A lot of you know all the various magazines but they werent all there at the beginning and id like to take youthrough what made conde nast conde nast. There were a number of fortuitous circumstances, but mostly and i apologize for the quality of some of these photographs, there was his mother pictured on the right. Unfortunately i dont have her as a young woman, this is the only picture the family still has in their possession. She was quite a lady in her own right. Her father was a guy called louis been lost and he settled in st. Louis in the lovely home here. Hewas married three times and had 15 children. And he was extremely wealthy. He was a banker. Apparently a good guy. I know that doesnt exactlygo with the term banker but go with me on this. And he left several Million Dollars tohis children when he died. Conde nast as a child numbers playing in his grandfathers bedroom and its currently still a Historic House on the outskirts of st. Louis for mostly as a wedding venue today but of course esther, his mother only inherited 300,000 by the time the money came down to her. On his fathers side, his grandfather wilhelm nast was born in germany, immigrated to the United States as a teacher but wasalways a sort of depressive kind of a chat , very serious but he converted to methodism and became known as the father of german methodism in north america. Excuse me, in north america. His eldest son william was a man who wanted to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth his family didnt have any so he decided he was going to go off to germany as the american consul to germany and buy himself a uniform so he could hobnob with all the royalties. His father was absolutely beside himself and naturally william nast fell on hard times because he stole money from american citizens while he was there though he left germany quickly under a cloud, took a number of odd jobs and somehow met up with esther benewah in new york city. Conde was eldest son, he had another brother louis who was a great pianist, but conde grew up essentially without a father. At the age of three william nast decided he was going back to europe to make his fortune, actually it was more like hard work was for suckers so conde and two younger sisters who were what they called new women. New women were women who made their own rules, they didnt hang around with chaperones for the turn of the 20th entry who actually were extremely independent and so was his mother. She had to be to keep the family together and of course as the years went on his father stayed away until he was 17. Things got pretty tough in the end. And the only member of the family that stayed close to them was his family who was william nasts younger sister fanny was actually quite a gal herself. She married into money. She loved fine things. She was very stylish in her own way and considering this picture was taken in the 1880s you can see that she did like to look nice. What is amazing is that she married into the Gamble Family of proctor and gamble fame so she decided she was going to help out poor esther to get her sons to an American College that would set them on their way. The only problem is when she went to visit louis apparently was very untidy. He reminded her a great deal of her brother who of course had abandoned the family and therefore she decided she would only send conde to georgetownuniversity. Louis never spoke to his brother again. So heres here he is as he graduated, a handsome young man. His best friend at college was bob collier. And bob was of course the air to the collier library. He went off on for a year to europe, to england, to oxford. Came back and his father said im going to give you colliers weekly because its failing. They only had Something Like 1000 worth of advertising at the time that he gave the weekly over to bob. And bob had done a lot of work with conde at various clubs at georgetown and he went down to st. Louis and talked conde into accepting a 12 aweek job with him. Which he did, considering he was a man of the family at that point and fortunately his father had died so he was no longer a drain on the family and the two of them worked together very happily indeed for about 15 years. Now, bob collier pictured at left here was an innovator. And he thought about making colliers less of a generalized magazine but with conde pushing him and saying we can sell advertising if we decide that were going to create special issues. So you saw before that the other picture that i just showed you was a remington issue, Frederic Remingtons arts, this was the issue that started the gibson girls going in terms of colliers magazine. He overpaid gibson by the way double what he would normally get at ladies home journal so he could have him exclusively for a period of 2 years and that was something conde learned about as well area and collier was also very into navigation. His great friend was Orville Wright on the right here and together with conde they set up the First Ever National newspaper, not newspaper. National Magazine Company that had its own Sales Network in every major city across america. Conde understood that to some magazines you had to make sure that your customer wanted to read the ads that were in it firstof all. Your advertiser had to feel he wasnt wasting his money advertising and also you were something calledethical in what you sold. This was the area of quack medicines, almost every newspaper on this to give you Something Special to cure. I dont think i really want to have any walkthroughs, i dont know about you but i think thats pretty bad but this product called runa aimed that it could cure absolutely anything. So colliers joined with believe it or not ladies home journal to set stop quack medicine advertising they believed it was killing americans. This is just a few other of the ads at the time. You canhave your diabetes readily cured. Which to the urbain pest we will strengthen your system, as ways your thirst and decreases your sugar and prevents diabetic shock. Wonderful. We wont go into doctor bennetts products , will we you wouldnt believe it but cw post who founded post cereals was another one of the people who was selling his cerealsas a medicine. Theres, heres to another year and years and years of steady nerves, clear brains andvigorous health. Bob collier was kind of spurred on byconde and decided he was going to sue old cw. And he did and he won. So he learned a great deal from his relationship with bob. Not only that but bob introduced him to his first wife clarence today are, i dont know if any of you remember the legal firm called to their brothers. But the family came across to america at the behest of the marquis de lafayette. George washingtons friend. They established themselves as International Lawyers in the early 19th century and larrys was part of new yorks 400. Conde was by now a wealthy man by 1902 when he married her. He was earning about 40,000 a year. The only person inamerica earning more at that time was Theodore Roosevelt as president. He earned 50,000. So she decided that she loved bob collier but bob collier didnt love her so conde was a good second from her point of view. He wasnt after her money. He understood that she held the whip hand as far as society was concerned area and the only problem is conde understood society was changing, women were changing. They wanted to become independent, and wanted the vote. They wanted her thoughts to be recognized and while certainly queries felt that was for her to, she didnt really like the idea of working for a living because that was beneath a member of the 400 on the social register. Instead, after two years of marriage where she had two children, coudert who was the son first and the peak of the daughter, she decided she was going to go off to paris and become a soprano of course, she would because her Three Sisters lived there as well. One of them had been supporting artist august rodin as his moneymaker, basically for the previous 20 years. Now, that isnt very good for a marriage, obviously. Conde decided 1904 that he was going to set up on his own, yes bob was paying him more money and he was worth area there was no doubt about it. 40,000 a year in those days was close on 1 million. But essentially he decided he was going to take a plunge into womens fashion. And youd say why womens fashion . Here he is at a national magazine. Theyre starting to gointo the niche markets. Conde decided womens fashion was going to be key to the changing role of women. Until now womens fashion in terms of the clothing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. The first of course was that all patterns were giveaways alongside fabrics. The second which was even more incredible was the fact that there was a new womens size. And conde decided that no woman as many sizes. Im going to empower her. Im going to empower women without money to make their own clothing in all the sizes that they come in and that they should, they should discard their course its, enjoy life and be women. And of course he was right. And he ended up allowing ladies home journal to own label his Home Patterns so home patterned company was his first company. Still working for bob collier butdue to a number of circumstances, he ended up leaving in 1906. 1907, that was the first time he tried to buy vote he failed. He went across the europe at that point rescue his two children from paris and his wife, she decided that she wanted to stay on. And though they went across, the children and the nurse made. Clarice decided she would come home to, but then in 1909 he bought vote. And larrys disappeared again for six months. Nobody in the family knows why but she did. He was lucky enough to buy vote. Sadly because its owner time , i called Arthur Turner who was part of groliers which was a big club at the time for publishers, he had set it up. Very early on in 1895. And he had hired on a lady at that point as a male clerk. On the left, her name is edna chase. By the time you see her on the right, she had been that editor of vogue, editorinchief of vogue for over 50 years. Conde kept her on obviously. It was turners sister who have been the actual editor at the time that he bought it and she basically left due to a disagreement over money. 1912 he decided on buying two more magazines and put them into one, something called house and garden, a few of you have heard of that one to now he has home patterned, vogue, house and garden early 1912. By 1914 he decides hes really like to set up an International Magazine empire dedicated to women and womens fashion and unfortunately theres something called world war i which began in 1914, for america it began in 1917. Edna chase comes up to conde and says ive got this wonderful idea. I know where cut off from french fashion and British Fashion but why dont we have something called a Charity Fashion show and it will get all the new york 400 involved and conde was skeptical. He said it smacks of trade. If clarys doesnt like working can you imagine these women working . She said give me a chance and of course she made it a success. She went to mrs. Stein vincent fish and was able to talk her into creating this fashion show. Maybe phoned miss after and it was a done deal and the only problem was it was arranged to be at the ritz carlton. The only problem with all the models for all the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not in america but miss astor and mrs. Fish were able to cobble together a very interesting show of new york fashion. Dont laugh. Here it is. The new York City Public Library is found some of the stills and if you go to their website you will see the fashions. As i said, the models were tied to other places and as you can see what generally conde was making close in different sizes is not all of them were models, were they . Theres more of these apparently at the new York City Library and i thought it would be interesting to see. Anyway, this upset another gentleman called William Randolph first who had just bought Harpers Bazaar and he said set his people out to badmouth boat and conde people who wanted to get rid of european fashion not imported to america anymore and they were only out to support new York Clothing designers, etc. Well, what happened was the representative arrived in paris during the war, was a big fat check for the seamstresses whod been put out of work. So first lost the first round , but he wasnt going to get up. We all know he never did that. Come 1915, two things happened. The most important one was a lunch with the gentlemanwho founded the coffeehouse in this building. Frankwrote in shield. Was a great aficionado of modern art. He was everybodys favorite raconteur. He had miles and acres of friends throughout new york city and conde had lunch with him, probably at the coffeehouse. I dont know where exactly and he said ive got a problem. I bought two magazines called dress and vanity fair. Ive tried to edit them myself that im a publisher, im not an editor and what do you think imgetting wrong. Frank said its very simple. You have to make it visible. You have to be a Cocktail Party where every time somebody turns the page, theyre actually joining you in a conversation. Their understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about is thinking about. And so he decided to hire frank on as the editor for vanity fair. On a handshake. He did his best deals on a handshake. They had one competitor at the time, hl megan was the editor and it was the smart set where they said one civilizedreader is worth 1000 boneheads. Well, smart set eventually went out of business, but they had a very friendly rivalry between them and as a matter fact, george the megan would work at the smart set ended up working at vanity fair after it closed. , they believed in hiring the best people. No matter what. It didnt matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic. Whatever. It didnt matter. What mattered was talent. It didnt matter if they were known. So he hired a girl called dorothy ross to write captions vogue. The one that cost frank Frank Crowninshields life was brevity is the soul of monterey. She kept dropping little poems on franks desk to try