I OWE so much to others in connexion with this book that if I were to set down the names and the reasons it would appear, quite properly, that I have done little except collect and theorize about material presented to me; it might also appear that I wish to make others responsible. Virtually everyone I know has contributed something—and in many cases they did so before I had thought of writing this book. I can therefore make only specific acknowledgments. Above all to two managing editors, John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson, Jr., of Vanity Fair and to their editor, Frank Crowninshield; they published several essays which later served as the raw material for chapters here, published portions of other chapters written expressly for this book, and otherwise encouraged and prospered me—to such an extent that I owe to them and to my fellow-editors of the Dial the holiday which made it possible for me to write at all. Except as otherwise acknowledged, the illustrations are reproduced with the permission of the artists; in addition, I have to thank the editors of the two journals mentioned for joining their permission in the case of work they originally reproduced, the firm of Albert and Charles Boni for the liberal use of Frueh’s Stage Folk, and H. T. Parker of the Boston Transcript for letting me reprint A Conversation in Old Athens. For technical information and exceptionally painstaking criticism I am indebted to Sara and Gerald Murphy, Martin Brown, Alexander Steinert, Deems Taylor, Lewis Galantière, H. K. Moderwell, and Dorothy Butler; for the material in the appendix to Charles Chaplin, Irving Berlin, Bushnell Dimond, Walter Hoban, and Sophie Wittenberg. My indebtedness to those whom I do not know—those I have written about—is too apparent to need emphasis, and too great to be adequately acknowledged.