One often reproduced portrait of Louise Brooks depicts the actress holding a late 1920s copy of The Smart Set – a once well known magazine whose heyday was the Teens and Twenties. Why Brooks was posed with the magazine is uncertain. Perhaps it was just a prop. Or perhaps, as with the image of Brooks holding a copy of Theatre Magazine, it was meant to bolster her image as a Jazz Age cultural sophisticate.
Though its circulation was relatively small, The Smart Set was a highly regarded magazine with a sophisticated, literary reputation. It has been called “The New Yorker of the early 1920s.” The magazine’s best known editors were George Jean Nathan – the highly regarded drama critic, and H. L. Mencken – one of the most distinguished literary and social critics in America. The two writers edited the magazine from 1914 to 1924. Proclaiming that “one civilized reader was worth a thousand boneheads,” Nathan and Mencken engaged in a full-scale assault on American naivety and puritanism. Their weapons were scorn, sarcasm, and mockery – as well as a fierce dedication to high culture and the avant-garde. The Smart Set was also known for its pithy epigrams. These epigrams were so popular that the magazine sold them to movie theaters, where they were shown to entertain the audience before the main feature.
For a short time during the Teens (from 1913 to 1914), The Smart Set was edited by Willard Huntington Wright (aka S. S. Van Dine), author The Canary Murder Case. Wright was the first editor in the United States to publish a short story by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Arthur Strindberg, Arthur Schnitzler and notably, Frank Wedekind – author of the Lulu plays.
Importantly, The Smart Set helped introduced American readers to the writers, literary trends, and critical ideas which would prove key to the development of American modernism. F. Scott Fitzgerald was an early discovery, as was Eugene O’Neill. Other American writers published in the pages of The Smart Set included Dorothy Parker, Ben Hecht, Maxwell Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Damon Runyon, Carl Van Vechten, Dashiell Hammett, and Jim Tully (author of Beggars of Life). After three decades of helping introduce readers to the best of European and American modernism, The Smart Set ceased publication in 1930.
The copy of The Smart Set which Louise Brooks is shown holding (pictured right) dates to August, 1927, which suggest about when this portrait was taken. This particular issue can be read or downloaded from the Internet Archive. As with other issues from the period when William Randolph Hearst owned / published the magazine (1924 to 1930), it contains true-life series, true life-stories, and true-life features. Among them is Elinor Glynn’s scintillating piece, “Have You Got It?” and Florenz Ziegfeld’s article, “The Open Door to the Follies.” There is also a charming picture of Marion Davies (of course), a couple of saucy pictures of Joan Crawford, and other images of Brooks’ contemporaries.
The Internet Archive has a large number of other issues of The Smart Set available online, though only in black and white. Their index page can be found HERE. The Modernist Journals Project contains a searchable digital collection of 120 issues of the magazine across nearly ten years — dating from January 1913 through December 1922. PDFs of these issues of The Smart Set (in glorious color) may be downloaded for free from the MJP website. Additionally, the HathiTrust contains various issues dating from 1900 to 1923. Color covers of the magazine dating from the 1920s, featuring flapper imagery, can also be found on Pinterest.
For further reading, check out these books. The first two are anthologies drawn from The Smart Set. Each contains short stories, poems and plays as well as some history and background on this illustrious magazine. These citations link to readable copies of these books housed on the Internet Archive.
Rascoe, Burton and Conklin, Groff (editors). The Smart Set Anthology. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1934.
— edited shortly after the demise of the magazine, this 840+ page anthology is rich in the literature of the teens and twenties; contains a long introductory history of the magazine
Dolmetsch, Carl R. The Smart Set. New York: The Dial Press, 1966.
— an anthology with material independent of the prior volume; also contains a reminiscence by Smart Set contributor S. N. Behrman
Curtiss, Thomas Quinn. The Smart Set: George Jean Nathan & H.L. Mencken. New York: Applause Books, 1997
— a history of the magazine focusing on Broadway and the Nathan – Mencken years; notably, Brooks was acquainted with the book’s author, Thomas Quinn Curtis, a journalist and biographer of Erich von Stroheim
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For more on the the Roaring Twenties, be sure and check out the LBS page, The Jazz Age: Flapper Culture and Style.