The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm

by Ellen Moers

Ellen Moers, in this fascinating study, has traced the development of dandyism as a social and literary phenomenon, from its origins with Beau Brummell in Regency England to its brilliant decadence in the yellow nineties. Beau Brummell's outrageous pose dominated court and high society circles in his day; his legacy was a literary ideal that lasted out the nineteenth century; and his style in dress exerts an influence to this day. With lesser dandies of his era he inspired the personal affectations and the Silver-Fork fiction of Bulwer and Disraeli. His followers, descending upon Paris after Waterloo, appalled and then dazzled the French, whose own generation of dandies entered the novels of Balzac and Stendhal. And from France to England in 1830, the dandy returned in the person of Count D' Orsay, whose individual dandyism left its mark on the late novels (and late waistcoats) of Charles Dickens--and whose personal life provided the anti-dandiacals with a startling example of what they were against. Banished by Carlyle's fulminations and by the Victorian reaction against all things Regency, dandyism survived in England in an underworld of nostalgia,and in France in the anti-bourgeois revolt of Barbey and Baudelaire. It returned openly to England in the nineties and expired in the blaze of publicity surrounding Oscar Wilde.What remained for Max Beerbohm was to write a satirical postscript to a century posing for a purpose. With many delightful illustrations.

Genres: History, Fashion, France, Nonfiction

372 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1978

About the author

American literary critic, born in New York, educated at Columbia University, Radcliffe, and Vassar. She taught at the University of Connecticut and the CUNY Graduate School. Like Elaine Showalter, Moers was important in founding Anglo-American feminist critical practice (see feminist criticism). Literary Women (1976) provides an illuminating literary history of women's writing; in this expansive and highly individual work Moers speculates upon common concerns, literary influences, and female expectations of American and European women writers. She was also author of the critical works The Dandy: Brummel to Beerbohm (1960) and Two Dreisers (1969), as well as a contributor to numerous journals and magazines, including The New York Review of Books and Harper's.

(from Ellen Moers Biography - (1928–79), Literary Women, The Dandy: Brummel to Beerbohm, Two Dreisers)

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This account of the "dandy” phenomenon, both in history and literature, relies on the fiction of the time for many of its examples and illustrations. It begins, of course, with George "Beau" Brummel, the first dandy and father of the modern dress suit, and, after discussing his biography and influence, proceeds to an historical account of the spread of the dandy craze throughout France after the defeat of Napoleon, and to the feminizing of the dandy image in the life and dress of the amiable, epicene Count D'Orsay.

It also relies heavily on Regency and Victorian fiction, including the social climbing dandy in Bulwer-Lytton and Disraeli, the hollow dandy of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and Thackeray's "Pendennis," and the aimless, melancholy dandy of the later Dickens. From there, Moers returns her discussion to France and Barbey D'Aurevilly who, in "Dandyism," turned what was then little more than a pose into a philosophy of being, thereby setting the stage for later serious dandies such as Baudelaire and Huysmans, as well as preparing the way for the resurgence and shameless commericialization of the dandy image in England, best exemplified in the careers of Wilde and Whistler.

This is an exhaustive, well-written and entertaining history of the subject, designed for literature majors. Warning: this is a work of academic criticism, almost thirty-five years old, and Moers—like most professors of the time—assumes that every reader of English can also read French. The frequent and occasionally lengthy passages in French are not translated here.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very scholarly yet readable book on the phenomenon of dandyism, which began with the famous George "Beau" Brummell, included such famous figures as Disraeli, Dickens, Balzac, Barbey d'Aurevilly and Baudelaire, and faded out with the quaint humorist Max Beerbohm. This movement was all about appearance and the mode of dress, but it also had to do with social class, aesthetics, fashionable clubs, politics and even religion. Above all, it was a code of manners and a way of dealing with life.

I learned a lot from this book. I deepened my knowledge of some very familiar authors, but I also met some new literary and artistic people.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, albeit somewhat dated, overview of the dandy figure from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries in England and France, with lots of interesting books, both major and minor, to add to your reading list. Given that this book originally came out at the beginning of the sixties, lots of things that seem obvious to a reader now are ignored; Moers hardly addresses the ways in which the dandy challenged gender binaries or sexuality, things that seems among the most important things to talk about in relation to the dandy, and when she does, it's in ways that seem clumsy and uncomfortable. She speaks of Oscar Wilde's sexuality with some distaste, for example, and her distaste makes her unable to read his work fairly, I think; she can't get past the surface of The Picture of Dorian Grey at all and thus values it too little. But she was clearing ground for the work that later scholars would do, and she still has interesting things to say to readers and historians and students now. She's good on the ways in which dandyism shifts its focus and its function as it moves through the nineteenth century and back and forth between England and France. And her prose is always lovely to read; the advent of theory a couple of decades later has done a lot of damage to academic prose. A book covering similar territory now would be almost unreadable by nonspecialists.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book traced the arc of the English dandy from origin to heyday to obsolescence. Part literary criticism, part history, part cultural study, it did hit on a lot of interesting notes. The dandy arc is also the 19th century arc of Britain from Regency to Victorianism to fin de siecle. The dandy story has a supremely upper class bent, as you might guess, the dandy is an upper class phenomenon. This book is fairly old now, I think it was written in the 70s, so it doesn't have that narrative power that modern history writers are able to utilize so well. This book was more informative than it was compelling, and I felt myself dragging through a lot of it. Be that as it may, I will always be drawn to this century and its very structured gender norms, perhaps more structured than any century that came before or after it. I'd like to see somebody study the dandy from a marxist or queer theory perspective. Moers touches on this, but not enough. I did enjoy underlining some of the lesser known dandy novels and adding them to my to-read list. For somebody interested in this topic, I would probably send them to those primary sources before I'd send them to this book.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moer's "Literary Women" was hugely influential for me when I read if in high school so I had some great hopes for this book as well. And the two are really not comparable. That said, this is an interesting history of what it meant to be a dandy, male attitudes towards dress and culture and related topics. It's also a product of its time in terms of how Moers tackles homosexuality and in terms of how scholarship at the time was written. The many paragraphs in French because all real scholars can read French is one example (I wish I could and suspect I missed a few things because I can't), as are the somewhat stilted biographical sketches. That said, my takeaway from this book was what an incredible shame it is that we lost Moers so early in her career. It would have been glorious to see more work from her.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is absolutely fantastic. Moers has a very engaging authorial voice, and the book is fun to read.

I especially enjoyed learning more about Max Beerbohm as he wrote one of the few pieces of criticism on Ouida (More 1899).

My one criticism is that Moers doesn't translate any of the extensive French quotes she includes.

[Patrice Doten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primarily interested in the rise of dandyism in the Regency era, I only skimmed the other sections of this book. I found the material covered detailed and well-researched, and though I’d liked to have read accounts of others in the dandy set besides Brummell and Prinny, they were its principle figures about whom much can be said.