The Life And Times Of Beau Brummell

"If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable." -- Beau Brummell Long before tabloids and television, Beau Brummell was the first person famous for being famous, the male socialite of his time, the first metrosexual -- 200 years before the word was conceived. His name has become synonymous with wit, profligacy, fine tailoring, and fashion. A style pundit, Brummell was singly responsible for changing forever the way men dress -- inventing, in effect, the suit. Brummell cut a dramatic swath through British society, from his early years as a favorite of the Prince of Wales and an arbiter of taste in the Age of Elegance, to his precipitous fall into poverty, incarceration, and madness. Brummell created the blueprint for celebrity crash and burn, falling dramatically out of favor and spending his last years in a hellish asylum. For nearly two decades, Brummell ruled over the tastes and pursuits of the well heeled and influential, and for almost as long, lived in penury and exile. With vivid prose, critically acclaimed biographer Ian Kelly unlocks the glittering, turbulent world of late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century London -- the first truly modern metropolis: venal, fashion-and-celebrity obsessed, self-centered and self-doubting -- through the life of one of its greatest heroes and most tragic victims. Brummell personified London's West End, where a new style of masculinity and modern men's fashion were first defined. Brummell was the leading Casanova and elusive bachelor of his time, appealing to both men and women of his society. The man Lord Byron once claimed was more important than Napoleon, Brummell was the ultimate cosmopolitan man. "Toyboy" to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and leader of playboys including the eventual king of England, Brummell inspired Pushkin to write Eugene Onegin, and Byron to write Don Juan, and he influenced others from Oscar Wilde to Coco Chanel. Through love letters, historical records, and poems, Kelly reveals the man inside the suit, unlocking the scandalous behavior of London's high society while illuminating Brummell's enigmatic life in the colorful, tumultuous West End. A rare rendering of an era filled with excess, scandal, promiscuity, opulence, and luxury, Beau Brummell is the first comprehensive view of an elegant and ultimately tragic figure whose influence continues to this day.

Traces the life the the English dandy who transformed the world of fashion in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. -- Dust jacket.

Pop star Beau, on British television with Tom Jones and Rolling Stones. Going nude with beautiful German Fraulein's in Hamburg. Cowboy movies with Clint Eastwood in Rome, to opening the first nudist colony in South Africa, Nelson Mandela's rainbow nation.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV About 1822, six years after Brummell had left England, Chateaubriand was able to say, "The dandy betrays the proud independence of his character by keeping his hat on his head, lounging upon a sofa, and stretching out his boots in the faces of ladies seated in admiration before him. He rides with a stick, which he carries like a wax taper, paying no attention to the horse which he happens to find between his legs. . . . It is said that he can hardly know whether he exists, whether the world is about him, whether it contains ladies, or whether he should greet his neighbour."1 It is thus obvious that Brummell's success had borne its fruit, and that his example had been unexpectedly triumphant. There was, 1 Chateaubriand, Mdmoires d'Outre-Tombe, ed. Bire, vol. iv. p. 246. moreover, no one else to serve as a model. While handsome George was reigning in Brighton, the Revolutionists in France had driven out the decent people. Most of these dmigrds met once more in London, but wretched was their condition. Povertystricken and dying of hunger, they were obliged first of all to find some means of earning their living, and the cheerfulness with which all these noblemen set to work is well known. Some, like M. de Caumont, set up as bookbinders; others became coal merchants, like M. de Chavannes; others, again, dancing masters, like the Chevalier de Payen.1 They snapped their fingers at fortune; and though constantly obliged to go without supper, they used to meet every evening to dance "to the violin of an assessor of the Parliament Court of Brittany."2 Notwithstanding their cheerfulness, their lives were very secluded, and they were in no position to set the tone of Society. When the Court of France had been destroyed and its members...