Bright Young People

The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age

By Taylor, D. J.

Publishers Summary:
Before the media circus of Britney, Paris, and our modern obsession with celebrity, there were the Bright Young People, a voraciously pleasure-seeking band of bohemian party-givers and blue-blooded socialites who romped through the gossip columns of 1920s London. Evelyn Waugh immortalized their slang, their pranks, and their tragedies in his novels, and over the next half century, many—from Cecil Beaton to Nancy Mitford and John Betjeman—would become household names. But beneath the veneer of hedonism and practical jokes was a tormented generation, brought up in the shadow of war. Sparkling talent was too often brought low by alcoholism and addiction. Drawing on the virtuosic and often wrenching writings of the Bright Young People themselves, the biographer and novelist D. J. Taylor has produced an enthralling account of an age of fleeting brilliance.

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ISBN
978-0-37411-683-5
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on January 15, 2009

This meticulously researched account of a notorious group of 1920s London partygoers was first published in England in 2007 to positive reviews, which noted the sensitive way novelist and biographer Taylor (Kept: A Victorian Mystery; Orwell: The Life) draws human detail from behind the gossip column scandals and the Evelyn Waugh novelizations that immortalized the group. Taylor sh...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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