The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans is a 1925 book by Miguel Covarrubias, a Mexican cartoonist. It is a collection of 66 black-and-white caricatures of famous American (mostly New York-based) personalities from the 1920s.[1] The future Edward VIII, alluded to in the title, appears as the frontispiece at a race track; he had made a widely publicized visit to the United States in 1924.[2] [3] Many of the drawings were originally published in Vanity Fair magazine, which employed Covarrubias as a staff cartoonist.
The book's introduction is by Carl Van Vechten.
The book was well received and increased Covarrubias's reputation,[1] although a reviewer in Theatre Arts Monthly described the characterizations as "surgically cruel".[4] Katherine Ann Porter described them as demonstrating "genius" in their "keen satirical comment", with "only one failure: Babe Ruth."[5] The following year, William Spratling and William Faulkner published Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles,[3] whose title Spratling later described as a parody of Covarrubias's.[6]