The English Eccentrics
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Britain has always harboured a magnificent gallery of gloriously peculiar souls, and Edith Sitwell's The English Eccentrics chronicles their extraordinary lives with wit, warmth, and barely concealed delight. From hermits who refused to cut their nails for decades to aristocrats who conversed only with animals, Sitwell presents a richly populated world of individuals who refused, often magnificently, to conform to the mundane expectations of their age. Set against the backdrop of Georgian and Victorian England, this celebrated work details the outlandish habits, obsessions, and philosophies of figures who stood defiantly apart from polite society, rendering them both absurd and strangely heroic. Sitwell's prose is itself a kind of eccentricity — baroque, jewelled, and alive with ironic affection — illustrating her profound sympathy for those who exist on the beautiful fringes of convention. First published in 1933 and reissued by Dobson, the work endures as a landmark of English literary humour and social observation, arguing implicitly that it is the eccentric, not the conformist, who gives a nation its true character and colour. Rich in anecdote and delivered with the knowing authority of one of the twentieth century's most singular literary voices, it leaves the reader wondering whether the most extraordinary life is, in fact, the only one worth living.
Author: Edith Sitwell
Format: Hardback
Published: 1958, Dobson
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Britain has always harboured a magnificent gallery of gloriously peculiar souls, and Edith Sitwell's The English Eccentrics chronicles their extraordinary lives with wit, warmth, and barely concealed delight. From hermits who refused to cut their nails for decades to aristocrats who conversed only with animals, Sitwell presents a richly populated world of individuals who refused, often magnificently, to conform to the mundane expectations of their age. Set against the backdrop of Georgian and Victorian England, this celebrated work details the outlandish habits, obsessions, and philosophies of figures who stood defiantly apart from polite society, rendering them both absurd and strangely heroic. Sitwell's prose is itself a kind of eccentricity — baroque, jewelled, and alive with ironic affection — illustrating her profound sympathy for those who exist on the beautiful fringes of convention. First published in 1933 and reissued by Dobson, the work endures as a landmark of English literary humour and social observation, arguing implicitly that it is the eccentric, not the conformist, who gives a nation its true character and colour. Rich in anecdote and delivered with the knowing authority of one of the twentieth century's most singular literary voices, it leaves the reader wondering whether the most extraordinary life is, in fact, the only one worth living.