''Holiday'' was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977, whose circulation grew to more than one million subscribers at its height. The magazine employed writers such as

Truman Capote Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, ...

Joan Didion Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer. Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese, she is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won ...

, Lawrence Durell, James Michener, and

E. B. White Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899 – October 1, 1985) was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including ''Stuart Little'' (1945), ''Charlotte's Web'' (1952), and '' The Trumpet of the Swan'' ...

. In 2014, the magazine was relaunched as a bi-annual magazine based in Paris, but written in English.

History

Launched by the Curtis Publishing Company, the first issue of ''Holiday'' appeared in March 1946. The magazine was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the Curtis Center near

Independence Hall Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers. The structure forms the centerpi ...

. After a lackluster start, with the fifth issue

Ted Patrick Theodore Roosevelt Patrick, Jr. (born 1930) is an American deprogrammer and author. He is considered to be the "father of deprogramming." Early life Ted Patrick was born in a red-light district of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in which he was surroun ...

became editor, a position he held until his sudden death in 1964. By the end of the first year the circulation topped 425,000. The magazine was known as a cosmopolitan travel wishbook with photo essays in full-color oversize 11 X 13.5 package along with articles by famous authors. John Lewis Stage, a photographer for Holiday described they way that Patrick enlisted name authors, "The concept was basically to get famous authors who had maybe one or two weeks in between their books or projects to go and travel and write glorious pieces. So you’d have James Michener sent off to the South Pacific, for example. It was an intriguing way to put together a magazine. It was an oddball publication that used photographs to tell stories.” Paul Theroux writing about Paul Bowles said of the magazine, "The frivolous name masked a serious literary mission. The English fiction writers,

V. S. Pritchett Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett (also known as VSP; 16 December 1900 – 20 March 1997) was a British writer and literary critic. Pritchett was known particularly for his short stories, collated in a number of volumes. His non-fiction works incl ...

and

Lawrence Durrell Lawrence George Durrell (; 27 February 1912 – 7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell. Born in India to British colonial p ...

also traveled for this magazine, so did

John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...

after he won his Nobel Prize for literature, when he crisscrossed the United States with his dog....Bowles wrote a piece for ''Holiday'' about hashish, another of his enthusiasms, since he was a life-long stoner. The magazine came of age in the

Jet Age The Jet Age is a period in the history of aviation defined by the advent of aircraft powered by jet turbine engines, and by the social change this brought about. Jet airliners were able to fly much higher, faster, and farther than older pisto ...

, when Americans were beginning to travel for leisure and joining the

jet set In journalism, jet set is a term for an international social group of wealthy people who travel the world to participate in social activities unavailable to ordinary people. The term, which replaced "café society", came from the lifestyle of tra ...

was a glamorous aspiration. A Vanity Fair article in 2013 stated that "what Vogue did for fashion, Holiday did for destinations. Many remember the atmosphere of the editorial department as resembling Mad-Men. The son of executive editor Carl Biemiller described the atmosphere "there was one hell of a cocktail-party circuit..." E. B. White wrote his 7500-word essay on the city of New York, "''Here is New York''", for the magazine in 1949. White's stepson,

Roger Angell Roger Angell (September 19, 1920 – May 20, 2022) was an American essayist known for his writing on sports, especially baseball. The only writer ever elected into both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Baseball Writers' Associa ...

, worked at the magazine in 1948.The essay was published as a gift book by

Harper Harper may refer to: Names * Harper (name), a surname and given name Places ;in Canada *Harper Islands, Nunavut *Harper, Prince Edward Island ;In the United States *Harper, former name of Costa Mesa, California in Orange County * Harper, Illi ...

and it was also released as a

Book-of-the-Month Club Book of the Month (founded 1926) is a United States subscription-based e-commerce service that offers a selection of five to seven new hardcover books each month to its members. Books are selected and endorsed by a panel of judges, and members ...

edition. Vanity Fair has since said of the essay, "It would become not only one of the most famous essays ever composed about the island of Manhattan but perhaps the finest. Over the years its plaintive language has been categorized as both poem and hymn." After 9/11, Vanity Fair also published the essay in book form in 2002 as a tribute. By 1961 the magazine was making almost $10 million a year in revenue, and by the next year circulation had grown to just under a million. After Ted Patrick's sudden death in 1964 there were internal issues between the current staff and Curtis Publishing Company over the direction of the magazine. Don A. Schanche of ''

The Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely ...

'' succeeded Patrick as editor. In response four of the editors, Harry Sions (editorial director), Frank Zachary (managing editor), Albert H. Farnsworth (executive editor), and Louis F. V. Mercier (pictures editor) resigned. Several of the magazine's writers, artists and photographers put out a large ad in the New York Times to "salute" the four as "good editors." In 1977, Curtis sold ''Holiday'' to the publisher of ''Travel'', a competing magazine, who merged the titles as a new publication, '' Travel Holiday''.

21st century relaunch

''Holiday'' relaunched in April 2014 by the Atelier Franck Durand, a Paris-based art direction studio, with Marc Beaugé as editor in chief and Franck Durand as creative director. The magazine is a bi-annual, conceived in Paris and written in English. Its official website mentions an upcoming café and clothing line. Durand described the new magazine, "It is not like the old Holiday when they had millions and they'd travel for weeks and week. But the concept is the same." The issue n°373 of ''Holiday Magazine'', first issue since the relaunch, was dedicated to the year 1969 and Ibiza. The issue n°373 includes contributions from photographers Josh Olins, Karim Sadli and Mark Peckmezian, a short novel about Ibiza by novelist Arthur Dreyfus, a story on

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin Inez van Lamsweerde (born 25 September 1963) and Vinoodh Matadin (born 29 September 1961) are a Dutch-American Fashion photography, fashion photographer duo, whose work has been featured in fashion magazines and advertising campaigns. They also pr ...

's New York loft, and the cover features a chosen fragment of Remed's painting "Leonogone". The first issue featured an essay about the history of the original ''Holiday Magazine''.

Notable editors

* Carl Biemiller (also children's book author) * John Knowles, American novelist * Ted Patrick, editor in 1948 until his death in 1964 * Harry Sions, former war correspondent *Alfred Bester, literary editor (also novelist, screenwriter, and renowned science fiction writer of The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination)

Notable writers and articles

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

–numerous articles beginning in 1953 for Holiday on

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

and

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

Gwendolyn Brooks Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poet ...

–''They Call it Bronzeville'' in October 1951. * Shirley Ann Grau (on Galatoire’s in New Orleans) * Morley Callaghan– on the University of Toronto *

John Cheever John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; ...

Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...

—Clarke wrote "
A Journey to Mars
'" an article about interplanetary space travel published in March 1953. *

Colette Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her ...

(on love in Paris) *

Alistair Cooke Alistair Cooke (born Alfred Cooke; 20 November 1908 – 30 March 2004) was a British-American writer whose work as a journalist, television personality and radio broadcaster was done primarily in the United States.Joan Didion Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer. Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese, she is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won ...

("''Notes from a Native Daughter"'') *

Clifton Fadiman Clifton Paul "Kip" Fadiman (May 15, 1904 – June 20, 1999) was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality. He began his work with the radio, and switched to television later in his career. Background Born in Br ...

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...

(on Mississippi) *

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celt ...

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., an ...

(on eating in London) *

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

Alfred Kazin Alfred Kazin (June 5, 1915 – June 5, 1998) was an American writer and literary critic. He wrote often about the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America. Early life Like many other New York Intellectuals, Alfred Kazin was ...

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian an ...

William Manchester William Raymond Manchester (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) was an American author, biographer, and historian. He was the author of 18 books which have been translated into over 20 languages. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal and the ...

* Mary McCarthy (''"The Vassar Girl"'') * John McNulty (on playing piano in a silent-movie theater) * James Michener *

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

—Miller wrote a December 1953 article on his alma mater, the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and a March 1955 article about his childhood, "
A Boy Grew in Brooklyn
'." Miller's first article was about his fears of

McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...

on the University of Michigan Campus. Miller learned years after editor Ted Patrick's death that he asked him to write the second article after General Motors threatened to stop advertising if the magazine ever published Miller again. *

Ogden Nash Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by ''The New York Times'' the country's best ...

* Ann Petry (on New York) *

William Saroyan William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''T ...

(on Fresno) *

Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...

(on Chicago) *

Budd Schulberg Budd Schulberg (born Seymour Wilson Schulberg, March 27, 1914 – August 5, 2009) was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his novels '' What Makes Sammy Run?'' and ''The Harder They Fall;'' ...

Irwin Shaw Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: '' The Young Lions'' ...

—the Pulitzer prize winning author wrote the article, "
Jalopies I Cursed and Loved
'" for the July 1954 issue. Along with several articles on France,Mr.Steinbeck also published portions of his book,“Travels with Charley:In Search of America”,in the July 1961,December 1961,and February 1962 Issues. *

James Thurber James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist and playwright. He was best known for his cartoons and short stories, published mainly in ''The New Yorker'' and collected ...

* Kenneth Tynan (on

Ingrid Bergman Ingrid Bergman (29 August 191529 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays.Obituary '' Variety'', 1 September 1982. With a career spanning five decades, she is ofte ...

) *

Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the lit ...

(on the Alamo) *

("''Here is New York''")

Notable artists, illustrators, and photographers

* Slim Aarons *

Ludwig Bemelmans Ludwig Bemelmans (April 27, 1898 – October 1, 1962) was an Austrian-American writer and illustrator of children's books and adult novels. He is known best for the ''Madeline'' picture books. Six were published, the first in 1939. Early life ...

Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as ca ...

George Giusti George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd Presiden ...

Edward Gorey Edward St. John Gorey (February 22, 1925 – April 15, 2000) was an American writer, Tony Award-winning costume designer, and artist, noted for his own illustrated books as well as cover art and illustration for books by other writers. Hi ...

Al Hirschfeld Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. Personal life Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex at 1313 Carr ...

* Tom Hollyman *

John Cullen Murphy John Cullen Murphy (May 3, 1919 – July 2, 2004) was an American illustrator best known for his three decades of work on the ''Prince Valiant'' comic strip. Early life and education Born in New York City, Murphy spent his childhood in Chicago a ...

Arnold Newman Arnold Abner Newman (March 3, 1918 – June 6, 2006) was an American photographer, noted for his "environmental portraits" of artists and politicians. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images. Early life and caree ...

* John Rombola *

Arnold Roth :''This is an article about Arnold Roth, the cartoonist. See also Arnie Roth, the musician.'' Arnold Roth (born February 25, 1929) is an American cartoonist and illustrator for advertisements, album covers, books, magazines, and newspapers. Noveli ...

* Richard Saunders * Fred Siebel * John Lewis Stage * Frank Zachary, art director for the magazine

References

External links

* Holiday, 1946-1977,

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

(a collection from black & white microfilm)
Website of the new ''Holiday'' magazine (2014)The Astounding World of ''Holiday''
(an archive of selected articles and artwork)
Josh Lieberman, “On ''Holiday''”. The ''Paris Review Daily'', November 30, 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holiday (Magazine) Visual arts magazines published in the United States Defunct magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1946 Magazines disestablished in 1977 Tourism magazines Magazines published in Philadelphia Jet Age