BEAU BRUMMELL, DANDYISM AND NECKCLOTHITANIA with Clara Tuite

This lecture focuses on the sensational Regency figure of George ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778-1840), the original English dandy. Famous first for his ‘discovery’ of the neckcloth and clean white linen, in 1816 Brummell made a famed midnight Channel crossing to France to escape debts run up in London’s gambling halls. Living in Calais and then Caen, he became an exiled tourist attraction and finally a study in ruination.

Clara Tuite is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne. Her main research interests are British Romanticism, and 18th and 19th century literary and cultural history, with a focus on the Regency. She is currently completing a book entitled Proverbial Notorious: Lord Byron and the Rites of Scandalous Celebrity.

R H Cooke, ‘George Brummell in Caen’, Frontispiece, Vol I, Captain Jesse, The Life of George Brummell, Esq., commonly called Beau Brummell, 2 vols., London, 1844