The Age of Scandal: An
Excursion Through a Minor Period by
T. H. White
This amusing foray into
eighteenth-century literature is an entertaining tabloid biography of an age
not unlike our own; men and women of fashion led their lives under the avid
scrutiny of a public who had a sharp appetite for scandal and sensation. In the
period between the so-called Age of Reason and the Romantic Revival ... that
which the author calls the Age of Scandal ... aristocratic and privileged
eccentrics flourished and the professional writer declined. Here we meet
notorious persons such as the Marquis de Sade; the Duke of Queensberry; who
dislocated London's milk supply; and the countess of Kingston, who journeyed to
Rome in the hope of seducing the Pope. There are also lesser figures like the
Misses Gunning, who were so beautiful that seven hundred people sat up all
night to see them leave an inn. T.H. White contends that these cultivated and
fortunate individuals, best represented by Horace Walpole, were Elizabethan in
their natures, without the formality of Alexander Pope or the exaggerated raptures
of William Wordsworth. - Amazon
THE SCANDAL-MONGER by T.H.
White
From his further explorations of the Age of
Scandal, T. H. White has returned with some remarkable specimens. The
eccentrics among them are hardly more conspicuous than the men and women who,
at this distance, seem representative of the eighteenth century. They had no,
or few, inhibitions. At work or play, in debt or in love, they expended a
vitality which we should find it hard to match. Mr. White exhibits them at
their best and their worst. His subjects include Duels, Dogs, Public
Executions, Blue Stockings, Bribery and Corruption; his personages Horace
Walpole, George Selwyn, Beau Brummel, the Chevalier d’Eon, Fanny Burney, Mary
Shelley, Mrs. Thrale . . .
If White's earlier book could be described as a "chronicle of humorous and
shocking scandal" (John Betjeman) what shall be said of this continuation
of it? What can be said — except that it will not disappoint those many readers
who relished the flavour of The Age of Scandal. – GoodReads.
Darkness at
Pemberley by T. H. White
Darkness at Pemberly was
first published in England in 1932, at which time it received excellent
reviews. It successfully combined two important story trends of the period: an
intellectual puzzle (one of the more ingenious locked-room puzzles of the
decade) and an action plot that any of the major mystery story writers of the
day would have been proud of. – Amazon.
America At Last: The American Journal Of T. H. White by T. H.
White, David Garnett
Introduction by David Garnett. His last book, a journal written during his American transcontinental lecture tour. – Amazon.
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