"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.

Celebrity personalities, who reign over much of our cultural landscape, owe their fame not to deeds but the ability to project a distinct personal image, an icon of the self. Author Rhonda Garelick locates a prototype of the star personality in the dandies and aesthete literary figures of the 19th century, such as Beau Brummel and Oscar Wilde, comparing them with Prince, Madonna, Jackie O. and other dandy-like figures of today. 19 photos.

An altogether unsatisfactory arrangement After their father's death, Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Peregrine travel to London to meet their guardian, Lord Worth, expecting an elderly gentleman. To their surprise and utter disgust, their guardian is not much older than they are, doesn't want the office of guardian any more than they want him, and is determined to thwart all their interests and return them to the country. With altogether too many complications But when Miss Taverner and Peregrine begin to move in the highest social circles, Lord Worth cannot help but entangle himself with his adventuresome wards... Praise for Regency Buck: "Clever!"— Library Journal "Georgette Heyer is unbeatable."— Sunday Telegraph "Light and frothy, in the vein of the author's other Regency novels, this follows the fortunes of Miss Judith Taverner and her brother, Sir Peregrine. A good introduction to Heyer's period stories..." — The Booklist "Reading Georgette Heyer is the next best thing to reading Jane Austen."— Publishers Weekly "A writer of great wit and style... I've read her books to ragged shreds"— Katie Fenton, Daily Telegraph "Wonderful characters, elegant, witty writing, perfect period detail, and rapturously romantic. Georgette Heyer achieves what the rest of us only aspire too."—Katie Fforde

The story of the world's first fashion-obsessed society in eighteenth-century London - and the colourful tales of extravagance, vanity, intrigue, and sexual indiscretion that accompanied it