Book dossier

Visitors

by Rupert Christiansen

"London in 1820 was a city of extraordinary creative dynamism and big money. Rupert Christiansen has marshaled the experiences of a set of remarkable foreign visitors to England, chronicling their impact on British culture and its impact upon them. These stories reveal the great French painter Gericault, who had come to London to show his Raft of the "Medusa," recording the climax of a public execution and the finish of the Derby; Richard Wagner guffawing at anti-Semitic jokes in the restaurant of the Victoria & Albert Museum; Ralph Waldo Emerson driving Thomas Carlyle to distraction with his 'moonshine' philosophy. Also included are the stories of the inexplicable powers of the American medium Daniel Home and his disastrous involvement with an elderly Cockney widow; the demon Australian bowler Frederick Spofforth who changed the course of English cricket; and the pirouetting Italian ballerinas who captivated the young Bernard Shaw and roused music-hall audiences to a collective erotic frenzy. In vividly readable and often hilarious detail, The Victorian Visitors tells of the remarkable foreigners who traveled to Britain in the nineteenth century and left influential marks on all aspects of its culture."--BOOK JACKET.