 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Vic Gatrell |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subjects | Covent Garden, History of London |
| Set in | Covent Garden |
| Published | London |
| Publisher | Allen Lane, Penguin (2014) |
Publication date | 2013 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 512 |
| ISBN | 9780718195830 |
| 942.107 | |
The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age is a 2013 book by the British writer and academic Vic Gatrell.
The book details the colourful history of the London district of Covent Garden which Gatrell describes as "teeming, disordered and sexually charged" and argues was the world's first "creative Bohemia". During the 18th century many of the UK's most significant artists, actors, poets, novelists, and dramatists lived in the district. The book features more than 200 pictures, many of which have been rarely seen.
In Times Higher Education Supplement , Clare Brant praised the "evocation of non-conformists in the capital’s cultural ‘heart’", which she described as "compelling". [1] In The Guardian Faramerz Dabhoiwala wrote that "Gatrell's book does it (the history of Covent Garden) justice in all the right ways. It is beautifully produced – from the sumptuous, almost three-dimensional dust jacket to the more than 200 illustrations sprinkled liberally throughout the text" and that the "book is mainly a celebration: a relaxed, confident and triumphantly successful re-creation of a fascinating world of male companionship, drunkenness, poverty, sex and art". [2]
In the New Statesman Frances Wilson wrote that the author is "terrific company" and "The First Bohemians is generously, often ingeniously, illustrated". [3] The book was also reviewed in The Economist , in which the reviewer wrote that the "richness of detail makes The First Bohemians a pleasure to read".
The First Bohemians was shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman Prize in 2014.
Sophie Dahl is an English author and former fashion model. Her first novel was published in 2003, The Man with the Dancing Eyes, followed by Playing With the Grown-ups in 2007. In 2009 she wrote Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights, a cookery book with recipes that were recreated for a six-part BBC 2 series, The Delicious Miss Dahl. In 2011 her cookery book, From Season to Season was published, and her first children's book, Madame Badobedah, was published in 2019. She is the granddaughter of author Roald Dahl.
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
Thomas Augustine Arne was an English composer. He is best known for his patriotic song "Rule, Britannia!" and the song "A-Hunting We Will Go". Arne was a leading British theatre composer of the 18th century, working at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He wrote many operatic entertainments for the London theatres and pleasure gardens, as well as concertos, sinfonias, and sonatas.
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. ENO's productions are sung in English.
The Hessell-Tiltman History Prize is awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content covering a period up to and including World War II, and published in the year of the award. The books are to be of high literary merit, but not primarily academic. The prize is organized by the English PEN. Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the 1960s and 1970s; on her death in 1999 she bequeathed £100,000 to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name. Each year's winner receives £2,000.
Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton was a British ballet dancer and choreographer. He also worked as a director and choreographer in opera, film and revue.
Charles Alexander Jencks was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous in the 1980s as a theorist of Postmodernism. Jencks devoted time to landform architecture, especially in Scotland. These landscapes include the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and earthworks at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. His continuing project Crawick Multiverse, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, opened in 2015 near Sanquhar.
The Royal Ballet School is a British school of classical ballet training founded in 1926 by the Anglo-Irish ballerina and choreographer Ninette de Valois. The school's aim is to train and educate outstanding classical ballet dancers, especially for the Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
The Theatre Museum in the Covent Garden district of London, England, was the United Kingdom's national museum of the performing arts. It was a branch of the UK's national museum of applied arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum. It opened in 1974 and closed in 2007, being replaced by new galleries at the V&A's main site in South Kensington.
Nine Elms is an area of south-west London, England, within the London Borough of Wandsworth. It lies on the River Thames, with Battersea to the west, South Lambeth to the south and Vauxhall to the east.
Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL, is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, poet, playwright, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities in a joint appointment of the College of Liberal Arts, the School of Sustainability and the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College in the University of Oxford, where he holds the title of Professor of English Literature. From 2017 to 2019 he was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric in the City of London. Until September 2019 he was Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. He was knighted in 2015 for services to literary scholarship and higher education.
Sir Osbert Lancaster, CBE was an English cartoonist, architectural historian, stage designer and author. He was known for his cartoons in the British press, and for his lifelong work to inform the general public about good buildings and architectural heritage.
The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691. Thus its aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular. The Society flourished until the 1730s and was briefly revived during 1757.
Vic Gatrell is a British historian. He is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Isabella Brant,a portrait drawing, was executed in Antwerp around 1621, by Flemish artist and diplomat, Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Brant (1591–1626) was Rubens' first wife and modelled for some of his portraits until her untimely death in 1626. The portrait is drawn in black and red chalk with white heightening on brown wash paper.
Loudon Sainthill was an Australian artist and stage and costume designer. He worked predominantly in the United Kingdom, where he died. His early designs were described as 'opulent', 'sumptuous' and 'exuberantly splendid', but there was also a 'special quality of enchantment, mixed so often with a haunting sadness'.
The Agatha Christie Memorial is a memorial to author and playwright Agatha Christie, located at the intersection of Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street by St Martin's Cross near Covent Garden, in London, United Kingdom.
Faramerz Noshir Dabhoiwala is a historian and senior research scholar at Princeton University where he teaches and writes about the social history, cultural history, and intellectual history of the English-speaking world, from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Hester Davenport was a leading actress with the Duke's Company under the management of Sir William Davenant. Among the earliest English actresses, she was best known as "that faire & famous Comoedian call'd Roxalana," as diarist John Evelyn put it after seeing her on 9 January 1661/2. Her career ended when she married Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford (1627-1703) in 1662 or 1663. The couple had a son in 1664. Oxford soon deserted Davenport and his son Aubrey, marrying a fellow nobleman's daughter in January 1672. In a 1686 church court case, Oxford admitted the marriage ceremony with Davenport had been a sham.
Antoine Benoist was a French draughtsman and engraver, who spent much of his working life in London, and was known as Anthony Benoist.
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