The Age of Scandal

“Between the Classical & the Romantic movements…there existed this other age, which was one of peculiar flavor,” writes T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone & other tales of Arthurian bravery. The Age of Scandal focuses on the period in late 18th-century England following the Age of Reason–a period characterized by dilettantism, material comfort & eccentricity. The literary sway of Swift, Pope & Johnson had by then given way to a more aristocratic set of literati, of whom Horace Walpole, writing from the house he’d christened Strawberry Hill, was the most splendidly eloquent example. Walpole etc. “were among the 1st people in England to be apprehended as personalities…Eccentric, individual, sentimental, dramatic, tearful,” they were lovers of gossip, fashion & exhibitionistic behavior. Among the most colorful were Selwyn, a famed execution-goer; Beckford, building an astonishing tower at Fronthill; & Joanna Southcott, remembered for her shocking announcement that she’d give birth to the new Messiah.
Based on writings by Horace Walpole & other literate recorders, White has constructed a “little scrapbook of a nostalgic Tory.” Here’s the fascinating record of another period of literary history by one of the best-loved writers of our own. He describes the eccentricities of the 18th-century Royal Family, the fashions of the nobility–the powdering of wigs, eating, drinking, medicine, birthday parties, theater & pronunciation; attitudes toward religion & sport; &, above all, the outgageous gossip circulating in literary circles. A witty, idiosyncratic, audacious portrait of a waning aristocracy, The Age of Scandal is an entertaining, authoritative description of late 18th-century English literati.