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The Mauve Decade: American Life at the End of the Nineteenth Century
Laced with witty anecdotes and epigrams, Beer's remarkable cultural history encompasses the wild panoply of the Gilded Age's last decade, from high society to the closing of the West. First published 1926. "A rich work of literary art," Burton Rascoe, The New York Sun.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1926
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About the author
Thomas Beer
73 booksThomas Beer is best remembered for his biographies of Stephen Crane (1923) and Marcus (Mark) Hanna (1929) and his witty study of American manners in the 1890s, The Mauve Decade (1926). Some of his realistic short stories were collected by Wilson Follett in Mrs. Egg and Other Barbarians (1947).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 9, 2016
Americans like political leaders who are human circuses, writes Thomas Beer in this reflective memoir of yesteryear, which carries resonance today.
Years ago I heard of this book : don't know how, don't know when. The title intrigued me. Mauve. Now there's a saucy color...a combo of grey-blue-magenta. Most promising. Or as Mr Whistler said, "Mauve? Mauve is just pink trying to be purple." Author Thomas Beer (1889-1940) plunges into US cultural history - a favorite topic of mine - though this wasnt what I expected. His mauve decade, a decade of prosperity & complacency, of poverty & excess & economic growth, is what others might call the Gilded Age, just prior to 1900. His report is both a blague and a blog.
Published in 1926, here's an impressionistic and personal view of US conflicts among the newsmakers, writers, philistines & their ilk -- and guess what? Not that much has changed today, except the names. "Architecture was still nothing but a malady," Beer allows. To continue: there's a terrible mania for the grandiose. ~ An oration with biblical quotations stirred hearts as nothing else could.~ Rebecca Harding Davis shocked Boston by remarking that women desired men. ~ The Irish, we learn, considered funny and charming, were snubbed. The playwright Dion Boucicault advised an Irish lad in NY, "Go West, my friend, and change your name."
A sociologist in academia mused, on politicians: "You could attack his political ideas, but people have no thought of them. They only understand a social personality." ~~ Professors have difficulty surviving in univerisities where individualism is dreaded.
The Civil War and Indian troubles, Beer notes, had kept immigration to the Midwest scanty, and life in Chicago, he adds with irony, was made difficult by the "servant question." But now the Swedes and Germans arrived, either as tribes or as bachelors and the moneyed in Omaha soon had a "cozenage of Karens and Ludmillas" eager to betray a mistress for another weekly one dollar or to announce a sudden wedding. The Middle Western woman, Beer reflects, tongue in cheek, became a fixture on social charts -- and the hope of missionary societies. Mrs Potter Palmer dominated Chicago; Susan Anthony congratulated the new Anti-Saloon League.
In 1891 the minor Populist speaker, Paul Suckow, assured a NYC crowd that "there was no such thing as impurity in Kansas." Mark Twain reported that at dinner "a nice English lad carelessly said he did not believe in the Virgin Birth. Every lady there jumped down his gullet--" What about free speech? "Not if it hurts people's feelings," honked writer Jeannette Gilder of the publishing family. And there you have yesterday and today.
Chockful of stories, presented with verve, Beer keeps you entertained -- and thinking. I wont get into his asides on Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, Mark Hanna or the gorgon Frances Willard. (The paperback cover is absurd; I was lucky to find a reprint of the original edition). Carl Van Vechten, who knew Beer - they shared the same publisher - regretted that he writes without a focused subject while sending up a geyser of details. True. But his triviata is operatic.
Years ago I heard of this book : don't know how, don't know when. The title intrigued me. Mauve. Now there's a saucy color...a combo of grey-blue-magenta. Most promising. Or as Mr Whistler said, "Mauve? Mauve is just pink trying to be purple." Author Thomas Beer (1889-1940) plunges into US cultural history - a favorite topic of mine - though this wasnt what I expected. His mauve decade, a decade of prosperity & complacency, of poverty & excess & economic growth, is what others might call the Gilded Age, just prior to 1900. His report is both a blague and a blog.
Published in 1926, here's an impressionistic and personal view of US conflicts among the newsmakers, writers, philistines & their ilk -- and guess what? Not that much has changed today, except the names. "Architecture was still nothing but a malady," Beer allows. To continue: there's a terrible mania for the grandiose. ~ An oration with biblical quotations stirred hearts as nothing else could.~ Rebecca Harding Davis shocked Boston by remarking that women desired men. ~ The Irish, we learn, considered funny and charming, were snubbed. The playwright Dion Boucicault advised an Irish lad in NY, "Go West, my friend, and change your name."
A sociologist in academia mused, on politicians: "You could attack his political ideas, but people have no thought of them. They only understand a social personality." ~~ Professors have difficulty surviving in univerisities where individualism is dreaded.
The Civil War and Indian troubles, Beer notes, had kept immigration to the Midwest scanty, and life in Chicago, he adds with irony, was made difficult by the "servant question." But now the Swedes and Germans arrived, either as tribes or as bachelors and the moneyed in Omaha soon had a "cozenage of Karens and Ludmillas" eager to betray a mistress for another weekly one dollar or to announce a sudden wedding. The Middle Western woman, Beer reflects, tongue in cheek, became a fixture on social charts -- and the hope of missionary societies. Mrs Potter Palmer dominated Chicago; Susan Anthony congratulated the new Anti-Saloon League.
In 1891 the minor Populist speaker, Paul Suckow, assured a NYC crowd that "there was no such thing as impurity in Kansas." Mark Twain reported that at dinner "a nice English lad carelessly said he did not believe in the Virgin Birth. Every lady there jumped down his gullet--" What about free speech? "Not if it hurts people's feelings," honked writer Jeannette Gilder of the publishing family. And there you have yesterday and today.
Chockful of stories, presented with verve, Beer keeps you entertained -- and thinking. I wont get into his asides on Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, Mark Hanna or the gorgon Frances Willard. (The paperback cover is absurd; I was lucky to find a reprint of the original edition). Carl Van Vechten, who knew Beer - they shared the same publisher - regretted that he writes without a focused subject while sending up a geyser of details. True. But his triviata is operatic.
August 24, 2022
This snarky book begins with a bang: “They laid Jesse James in his grave and Dante Gabriel Rossetti died immediately.” Beer was off and running and never ran out of breath, taking the 90s generation down more than a few pegs. His target was the old cultural establishment, the hierarchy before modernism. A world too genteel to survive.
This book cries out for an annotated edition. One would have to be a survivor of endless graduate seminars to recognize all the references. Beer’s style is entertaining enough to keep you interested in the ghosts of literati long forgotten.
Beer was best known for his biography of Stephen Crane, first published in 1923. Later scholars have determined that Beer created letters and incidents from Crane’s life. This also applied to Beer’s biography of Mark Hanna, from 1929. Enjoy the book, but realize that Beer was an unreliable narrator. Did Beer really have a conversation with the Irish American physician he extensively quotes in the chapter “Dear Harp”? The man sounded suspiciously like the student of William Graham Sumner and the fictional Petronius from Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis who also make extended appearances.
Perhaps more than for its portrait of the 1890s, the book is valuable for its portrayal of cultural change. It’s not really about the Mauve Decade, but about how the attitudes of the Roaring Twenties vanquished the old America.
This book cries out for an annotated edition. One would have to be a survivor of endless graduate seminars to recognize all the references. Beer’s style is entertaining enough to keep you interested in the ghosts of literati long forgotten.
Beer was best known for his biography of Stephen Crane, first published in 1923. Later scholars have determined that Beer created letters and incidents from Crane’s life. This also applied to Beer’s biography of Mark Hanna, from 1929. Enjoy the book, but realize that Beer was an unreliable narrator. Did Beer really have a conversation with the Irish American physician he extensively quotes in the chapter “Dear Harp”? The man sounded suspiciously like the student of William Graham Sumner and the fictional Petronius from Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis who also make extended appearances.
Perhaps more than for its portrait of the 1890s, the book is valuable for its portrayal of cultural change. It’s not really about the Mauve Decade, but about how the attitudes of the Roaring Twenties vanquished the old America.
August 31, 2018
#TheMauveDecade #NetGalley
A classic of the literature. Thomas Beer's novel is a delightful travel to the 19th century. A mix of the morals, politics, society, and literature are back to life in this book.
A classic of the literature. Thomas Beer's novel is a delightful travel to the 19th century. A mix of the morals, politics, society, and literature are back to life in this book.
March 6, 2024
A acerbic, gossipy cultural history. If you know enough about the 1890s to follow the inside baseball, you will enjoy this thoroughly. The distinctive narrative voice really opened my eyes to the possibilities of the genre after years as an academic.
April 29, 2021
I found this book to be extremely interesting! I am intrigued by all things from the 19th century, especially the 1870s. An excellent read.
Want to read
January 27, 2013Only bought it because Faulkner mentioned it. Have yet to read.
September 6, 2013
American Lit,
Pontifical College Josephinum
Rev Msgr Leonard J Fick
Pontifical College Josephinum
Rev Msgr Leonard J Fick
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews