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Review
"'The most sumptuous and beautiful history book in years... Great toppling pyramids of bottoms and bosoms decorate this book, nipples stipple it, and on every page chamber pots and tankards overflow' Stella Tillyard, Sunday Times"
Nicholas Lezard, Paperback Choice, The Guardian, October 2007
One can only stand in awe when contemplating Gatrell's achievement. ... His industry and commitment are prodigious. ... And there is a larger issue here than the straightforward energy of the medium of the satirical print: it concerned liberty and independence, a freedom of mind that could either tell the truth to power, or simply laugh at everything. It couldn't last: an age of moralising dawned, and you could make a case for saying that we're still living in it. So all the more reason for cherishing this book, which celebrates, as Gatrell puts it, "our great, louche, comic tradition" ... This is a work that will keep you entertained for months.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fascinating, original, and utterly absorbing study of the Eighteenth Century. It is worth buying for the illustrations alone! Gatrell writes with warmth and insight - this is what literary history should be!
Format:Paperback
Before Victorian prudery clamped down a lid of stern disapproval on British behaviour, we were a rowdy, randy lot. The cartoons of Georgian England are Rabelasian, earthy and frequently libellous. The wave of bad behaviour - and of artistic depiction of same - crested in the Regency, and happily this book deals with the "long 18th century"; the four Georges and even, to avoid an abrupt cut-off, tailing off into the 1840s.
There is no doubt Catrell is the master of the subject; the book is authoritative, indeed exhaustive. For, sadly, the light-hearted nature of his subject matter has failed to rub off on him and, for all its intrinsic interest, this is far from being a light read. To be literal, the book itself (printed throughout on glazed paper) is heavy enough to make your arms hurt; don't try it last thing at night unless you fancy combining your bedtime reading with a little weight-lifting.
I feel mean criticising this book on this account; clearly two other reviewers loved every word. And don't get me wrong, the book is full of stuff. I just wish the author's style had been lighter, the print less microscopic, and a good editor had persuaded him to cut the word-count drastically. On the plus side, that heavy paper means the illustrations are numerous, good quality and inset in the text; something which goes quite a way to counterbalance my other quibbles.
There is no doubt Catrell is the master of the subject; the book is authoritative, indeed exhaustive. For, sadly, the light-hearted nature of his subject matter has failed to rub off on him and, for all its intrinsic interest, this is far from being a light read. To be literal, the book itself (printed throughout on glazed paper) is heavy enough to make your arms hurt; don't try it last thing at night unless you fancy combining your bedtime reading with a little weight-lifting.
I feel mean criticising this book on this account; clearly two other reviewers loved every word. And don't get me wrong, the book is full of stuff. I just wish the author's style had been lighter, the print less microscopic, and a good editor had persuaded him to cut the word-count drastically. On the plus side, that heavy paper means the illustrations are numerous, good quality and inset in the text; something which goes quite a way to counterbalance my other quibbles.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
very well written,and well illustrated
would recommend to anyone who likes books with reference to the
18th century.
would recommend to anyone who likes books with reference to the
18th century.
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