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The Beau Monde

By Hannah Greig

Product Image: The Beau Monde

The Beau Monde

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Description
Caricatured for extravagance, vanity, glamorous celebrity and, all too often, embroiled in scandal and gossip, 18th-century London's fashionable society had a well-deserved reputation for frivolity. But to be fashionable in 17s London meant more than simply being well dressed. Fashion denoted membership of a new type of society - the beau monde, a world where status was no longer determined by coronets and countryseats alone but by the more nebulous qualification of metropolitan 'fashion'. Conspicuous consumption and display were crucial; the right address, the right dinner guests, the right possessions, the right jewels, the right seat at the opera.
The Beau Monde leads us on a tour of this exciting new world, from court and parliament to London's parks, pleasure grounds, and private homes. From brash displays of diamond jewellery to the subtle complexities of political intrigue, we see how membership of the new elite was won, maintained - and sometimes lost. On the way, we meet a rich and colourful cast of characters, from the newly ennobled peer learning the ropes and the imposter trying to gain entry by means of clever fakery, to the exile banned for sexual indiscretion.
Above all, as the story unfolds, we learn that being a Fashionable was about far more than simply being 'modish'. By the end of the century, it had become nothing less than the key to power and exclusivity in a changed world.
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
364
Release Date:
2013-11-01
Publication Date:
2018-06-28
Publisher:
Oxford University Press (UK)
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0199659001
ISBN13:
9780199659005
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
710 g
Height:
161 cm
Width:
240 cm
Thickness:
24 cm
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