Familiar with the general society and if you dont mind im going to ask. How many of you here this evening is this your first event . A warm welcome and of course a welcome back to previous attendees. The general society was founded in 1785 by 22 artisans. Today our 234yearold organization continues to serve the people of the city of new york. We do this through our cultural and educational programs. They include our lecture series which of course is the lecture to the party. The general Society Library which will be celebrating 200 years next year. Our tuition free Mechanics Institute and the john m. Loughlin and collection which you are welcome to visit after our talk this evening and that is upstairs. Youll find more information on the blueandwhite postcard on your seats. Now we have such a wonderful start to this years lecture season. I have the pleasure of welcoming critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who tonight will discuss her accuracy of conde nast the Public Affairs and other illustrious publications but i also want to mention if you have not argued done so you will have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book but this absolutely stunning cover later this evening so please be aware that you have this opportunity and susan would be happy to sign the book for you. I also want to mention that cspan is also filming this talk tonight so this program will also be rebroadcast on booktv. When we do get to the q a portion i want to remind you anyone who is asking a question you will have the opportunity to be featured on booktv. Born and raised in the United States ms. Ronald has lived in england for more than 25 years and has come especially this week to talk about her book. She is the author of a dangerous woman, erratic 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 that our technical problems are at an end. You may see some little dots there on the bottom. I decided to write about conde nast really because i tend to write about power and greed. All of the people ive written about the four, theres another book which isnt on here about powerful people. Some of them have been greedy and ill post all of them have had some sort of brushes with the law but after a dangerous woman about foreign schools who was married to the youngest son of jay gould who many of you certainly know of i decided having written about someone who was incredibly powerful, incredibly devious and also Hermann Goering was never tried for her dastardly deeds. I needed to cleanse myself but. 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 can you write about a nice person . It was my agent that i suggested i have a look at the Publishing Industry and are there any good guys and publishing . Sure enough he was right so i decided im going to write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turnofthecentury and then going into world war ii, conde nast. Of course a lot of you know all of the various magazines but they werent all there at the beginning. Id like to take you through what makes conde nast, conde nast. There were a number of gratuitous circumstances but mostly and i apologize for the quality of some of these photographs. They were his mothers who is pictured on the right here. Unfortunately i dont have her as a young woman. This was 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 van wall. He settled in st. Louis in this lovely home here. He was married three times and had 15 children. And he was extremely wealthy. He was a banker apparently a good guy. That doesnt exactly go with the term banker but go with me on this, okay . He left several Million Dollars to his children when he died. Condi as a child remembers playing in his paternal grandfathers bedroom. Currently still a Historic House on the outskirts of st. Louis mostly as a wedding venue today. Of course after his mother only in hair did 300,000 by the time the money came down to her. On his fathers side is grandfather wilhelm nast was born in germany and came to the United States as a teacher. There was always a depressive chapter but he became, he converted to methodism and he became known as the father of german methodism in north america, excuse me in north america. William was a man who wanted to be worn with a silver spoon in his mouth but his family didnt have any. So he decided he was going to go off to germany as the american consul to germany and hobnobbed with all the royals. His father was absolutely beside himself and naturally william nast fell on very hard times because he also stole money from american citizens while he was there. He left germany very quickly under a cloud and took a number of odd jobs and somehow met up with mr. Van wall in new york city. Conde was the eldest son. He had another brother, louis who was a great pianist but condi 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 hard work for. Condi wisdom men of the family. He had two younger sisters as well that they called new women. New women were women who didnt hang around with chaperones before the turn of the 20th century to actually work extremely independent and so was his mother. She had to be to keep the family together but of course as the years went on his father stayed away until conde was 17. Things got pretty tough in the end. The only nast member of the family that stayed close to them with his aunt fannie who was william nasts younger sister. Now fannie 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 could see she did like to look nice. What is amazing is she married into the Gamble Family of Proctor Gamble fame. She decided that she was going to help out after to get her sons to an American College that would send them on their way. The only problem was when she went to visit lily he apparently was very untidy. He reminded her great deal of her brother who had abandoned the family. Therefore she decided she would only send conde to georgetown university. Louis never spoke to his brother again. Heres conde has he graduated. He was a very handsome young man his best friend in college was bob collier. Bob collier was of course the heir to the collier library. He went off for a dear to europe to england to oxford, came back and his father said im going to give you colliers white lee because it was failing. They only had Something Like 1000 worth of advertising at the time he gave the week we over to bob. Bob had done a lot of work with conde at georgetown and he went down to st. Louis and talked conde into accepting a 12dollar a week job with him. Which he did. Considering he was the man of the family at that point unfortunately cant bes father died so he was no longer drain on the family and the two of them work worked together very happily indeed for about 15 years. Bob collier pictured on the left here was an innovator. He thought about making collier left of the generalized magazine but with conde pushing him saying look we can really tell sell advertising if we decide we are going to create special issues. You saw before the other picture that i just showed you with frederick remingtons art, this was the issue that started the gibson girl in terms of colliers magazine. He overpaid gibson double of what he would normally get of the ladies home journal so he could have him exclusively for period of two years. That was something that conde learned about as well. Bob collier was also very into navigation produce great friend was Orville Wright who is on the right here and together with conde they set up the firstever National Newspaper, not newspaper, National NewspaperMagazine Company that had its own Sales Network in every major city across america. Conde understood to sell magazines you had to make sure that your customer wanted Cherica Adams that were in it first of all, that your advertiser had to feel he wasnt wasting his money advertising it also you were ethical and what you sold. This was the era of quack medicines. Almost every newspaper promised to give you something special. I didnt think i would want to have in a swamp for it that i dont know about you but i think thats pretty bad. This product claimed it could cure absolutely anything. Colliers joined with believe it or not ladies home journal to stop quack medicine advertising. They believed it was killing americans. This is just a few of the ads at the time. You can have your diabetes readily cured with the van urey and test we to prevent diabetic shock. We wont go to dr. Bandits products, will we . Believe it or not at cw post who founded post cereals was another one of the people who is selling his cereals as a medicine. Heres to another year and years and years of steady nerves, to clear brain sent to chris health. But collier was spurred on by conde to say he was going to sue old tw and he did anyone. Conde learned a great deal from his relationship with bob. Not only that but bob introduced him to his first wife carise could bear. I dont know if any of you remember a legal firm called cuday are brothers in new york city. They had their offices on fifth avenue for many many years. The family came across to america at the behest of the markey d lafayette, George Washingtons friend. They establish themselves as International Lawyers in the early 19th century. Clarice 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 in america earning more at that time was Theodore Roosevelt as president. He burned 50,000. So she decided that she loved bob collier bipod collier didnt love her. Conde was a good second from her point of view. He wasnt after her money. He understood that she was with him as far society was confirmed. Only problem was conde understood society was changing. Women were changing that they wanted to be independent and they wanted to vote and they wanted their thoughts to be recognized. While certainly clarice felt that was for her to she didnt really like the idea of working for a living is that was beneath a member of the 400 on the social register. Instead after two years of marriage where she had two children, cuday are who was the sun and then the tica the daughter, she decided she was going to go off to paris and become a soprano in paris. Of course she would because her Three Sisters lived there as well. One of them had been supporting the artist of ms. Rodin as his moneymaker basically for the previous 20 years. That isnt very good for a marriage obviously. Conde decided in 1904 that he was going to set out on his own. Yes bob collier was paying him more money than he was worth, there was no doubt about it, 40,000 in those days was close to 1 million but essentially he decided he was going to take the plunge into womens fashion. You say, why womens fashion . Is that a National Magazine and they are starting to go into the niche markets. Conde had decided that womens fashion was going to be key to the changing role of women. Up until now womens fashions in terms of the clothing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. The first was all patterns were giveaways alongside fabrics. The second which was even more incredible was the fact that there was only one size. Conde decided the new woman has many sizes. Im going to empower her. Im going to empower women to make their own clothing and all the sizes that they come in and they should discard their corsets, enjoy life and be women. Of course he was right. He ended up allowing ladies home journal to take his patterns. He is still working for bob collier but due to a number of circumstances he ended up leaving in 1906. It was the first time he tried to by the vote but he failed. He went across to europe at that point to rescue his two children from paris and his wife. She decided that she wanted to stay on so they went across, picked up the children and the nurse made. Clarice decided she would come home to. But then in 1909 queries disappeared for six months. Nobody in the family knows why but she did. He was lucky enough to buy vogue sadly its owner that time back i called Arthur Turner part of the big club at the time for publishers, he had set it up very early on in 1895. He had hired on a lady at that point as a male clerk. Her name name is edna woman chase. By the time you see her on the right she had been the editor of vogue, the editorinchief at vogue for over 50 years. Conde kept her on obviously. He was turner sister who had been the editor at the time he had audit and she basically left due to a disagreement over money. In 1912 he decided to buy two more magazines something called house and garden. I think a few of youve heard of that one too. Now he had vogue, house and garden 1912. By 1914 he decides hed really like to set up an interNational Magazine empire dedicated to women and womens fashion. Unfortunately there was something called world war i which began in europe in 1914. Edna woman chase comes up to conde and says ive got this wonderful idea. I know where cut that from friends freshen in the mens fashion because of the bar but why dont we have something called a Charity Fashion show and get all the new york 400 involved. He was very skeptical. Queries doesnt like working. Can you imagine these were women working on a Charity Fashion show . She said give me a chance and of course she made it a success. She was able to talk her into creating this fashion show. It was a done deal. The only problem was it was arranged to be at the ritzcarlton new york to the only problem was all of the models for all of the nations previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not in america. Mrs. 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 just found some of the stills and if you go to their web site you will see the fashions. As i said the models were tied to other places and as you can see fortunately calmed a was making clothing in different sizes. Not all of them were models, where they . There are more of these apparently at the new York City Public Library. I thought it would be really interesting to see. Anyway this upset another gentleman William Randolph hurst who had just bought harpers bazaar. He sent his people out to badmouth vogue and conde nast. People want to get rid of european fashion and not imported to america anymore. They were only out to support new York Clothing designers etc. Etc. Well what happened was condes representative arrived in paris during the war. There was a big that check for the seamstresses who had been put out of work. Hurst lost the first round but he wasnt going to give up. We all know he never did that. Come 1915, two things happened. The most important one was a lunch with the gentleman who founded the coffeehouse frank ronin shield. Frank was a great aficionado of modern art. He was everybodys favorite raconteur. He he had miles and acres of friends throughout new york city and conde had lunch with him probably at the coffeehouse actually. I dont know where its at and he said ive got a problem. Ive got to two magazines called address in vanity fair. I have tried to edit them myself but im a publisher. Im not an editor. Would he think im getting from anne Frank Sidwell is very simple. You have to make it sizzle. You have to make it a Cocktail Party where every time somebody turns the page they are actually joining you in a conversation. They are actually understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about his thinking about. So conde decided to hire frank as the editor for vanity fair on a handshake. He did his best deals on a handshake. They had one competitor at the time. H. L. Mencken was the editor and it was a smart set where they said one civilized reader is worth 1000 pits. Smart set went out of business but they have a very friendly rivalry between them. As a matter fact he ended up working at vanity fair after close. Conde believed and hiring the best people no matter what. It didnt matter whether they were, jewish, catholic, whatever. It didnt matter. It didnt matter if they were known so we hired a girl called Dorothy Rothschild to write captions for vogue. The one that caught frank crenna and shields i was brevity is the soul of lingerie. She kept dropping little poems on franks desk to transfer it from little old folk to vanity fair that finally he agreed to take her on. He then also wanted to take on somebody to make the vanity fair articles more substantial city brought on the chap in the middle a guy called Robert Benchley who was actually one of the funniest people ive ever written about and his own biography is absolute historical. He was a harvard graduate. Hed been the editor of the Harvard Lampoon and he got the job he could see was going to get very serious. I open the book with one of the incidents that happened while they were working there. Essentially by the way he went on to win an oscar for short that was produced by mgm called how to sleep. Its a stared way funny if you can ever get ahold of it. Dorsey of course would eventually go on to other things but the third person in the pictures a gentleman called Robe