Promotional Information

The most significant work of British history of the decade so far, now in trade paperback. 'The most sumptuous and beautiful history book in years... Great toppling pyramids of bottoms and bosoms decorate this book, nipples stipple it, and on every page chamber pots and tankards overflow' Stella Tillyard, Sunday Times

About the Author

Vic Gatrell is professor of British history at the University of Essex, a life fellow of Gonville and CaiusCollege, and a member of the Cambridge history faculty.His last book, The Hanging Tree, was chosen by Linda Colley and Jeremy Paxman as their 'Book of the Year'.

Reviews

"'The most sumptuous and beautiful history book in years... Great toppling pyramids of bottoms and bosoms decorate this book, nipples stipple it, and on every page chamber pots and tankards overflow' Stella Tillyard, Sunday Times"

For those brought up on the genteel novels of Jane Austen, Gatrell (The Hanging Tree) has a rude surprise in store. Drawing heavily on Gillray, Cruikshank and Rowlandson's famous satirical prints, Gatrell vividly demonstrates the maliciousness and ribaldry of Georgian London. What made Londoners laugh was less the polished wit of the literary salon than a combination of drunken frat-boy-style jokes, toilet humor and nasty political satire. Gatrell notes that few of the tens of thousands of prints that appeared between 1770 and 1830-the heyday of satire-dealt with "social change" or high literature, except in the most condescending terms. They instead reflected "the subjects of everyday observation and conversation," at least of the artists' middle- and upper-class patrons, and "remind us that the views of most comfortable Londoners were then as unexamined and as bound by daily preoccupations as they are now." By 1830, the satirical impulse had been tamed by the rise of pietism, the idealization of female virtue, the coronation of a new king, steps toward voter franchise and the execution of leading radicals. Better manners and respectability, Gatrell sadly concludes, killed the fart joke. 300+ b&w and color illus. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.