Scandalous Society - Nick Foulkes

• Paperback
• Condition: Very Good
• 467 pages
• Non-Fiction: History, Biography

Before history clad the entire Victorian era in black, beards and bristling disapproval, there was a period of outrageous excess. In the 1830s and '40s, High Society glittered with rakes and dandies, chancers and charmers, duellists and debtors, pugilists and patrons. It was an era of flamboyant fashion and sparkling sensation.

And none was more sensational or flamboyant than Count d'Orsay. Exceptionally good-looking, he propelled himself to its pinnacle, and became the ultimate arbiter of taste.

Yet d'Orsay was no vacuous celebrity. He operated as a political spin doctor, networked on behalf of authors and artists and counted Dickens, Disraeli, the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon III among his circle.

Scandalous Society brilliantly evokes an era when the serious and the sensational waltzed hand in hand before toppling over the High Victorian precipice of propriety.