Beau Brummell
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: Good
He transformed the art of dressing into a form of social power — and in doing so, became the most influential man in Regency England without ever holding office, commanding armies, or inheriting a fortune. Hubert Cole's Beau Brummell chronicles the extraordinary life of George Bryan Brummell, the middle-class dandy who, through sheer force of wit, impeccable taste, and audacious self-invention, ascended to become the intimate of the Prince Regent and the undisputed arbiter of London's fashionable society. Set against the glittering and precarious world of early 19th-century Britain, the biography traces Brummell's spectacular rise from an unremarkable background to the very pinnacle of social prestige — and his equally dramatic fall into debt, exile, and obscurity in France. Cole writes with a sharp eye for historical detail and a keen appreciation for the paradoxes that defined his subject: a man whose legacy was built on appearance yet whose inner life was marked by pride, loneliness, and ruin. Beau Brummell illuminates the broader cultural forces of the Regency era — the rigid class structures that Brummell simultaneously exploited and defied, the birth of modern masculinity and men's fashion, and the fragile nature of celebrity before the age of mass media. For anyone curious about how one man's obsession with elegance could reshape an entire society's relationship with style, this biography presents a portrait that is as compelling as it is cautionary.
Author: Hubert Cole
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage
Pages: Good
He transformed the art of dressing into a form of social power — and in doing so, became the most influential man in Regency England without ever holding office, commanding armies, or inheriting a fortune. Hubert Cole's Beau Brummell chronicles the extraordinary life of George Bryan Brummell, the middle-class dandy who, through sheer force of wit, impeccable taste, and audacious self-invention, ascended to become the intimate of the Prince Regent and the undisputed arbiter of London's fashionable society. Set against the glittering and precarious world of early 19th-century Britain, the biography traces Brummell's spectacular rise from an unremarkable background to the very pinnacle of social prestige — and his equally dramatic fall into debt, exile, and obscurity in France. Cole writes with a sharp eye for historical detail and a keen appreciation for the paradoxes that defined his subject: a man whose legacy was built on appearance yet whose inner life was marked by pride, loneliness, and ruin. Beau Brummell illuminates the broader cultural forces of the Regency era — the rigid class structures that Brummell simultaneously exploited and defied, the birth of modern masculinity and men's fashion, and the fragile nature of celebrity before the age of mass media. For anyone curious about how one man's obsession with elegance could reshape an entire society's relationship with style, this biography presents a portrait that is as compelling as it is cautionary.