The bachelor has long held an ambivalent, uncomfortable and even at times unfriendly position in society. This book carefully considers the complicated relationships between the modern queer bachelor and interior design, material culture and aesthetics in Britain between 1885 and 1957. The seven deadly sins of the modern bachelor (queerness, idolatry, askesis, decadence, the decorative, glamour and artifice) comprise a contested site and reveal in their respective ways the distinctly queer twinning of shame and resistance. It pays close attention to the interiors of Lord Ronald Gower, Alfred Taylor, Oscar Wilde, Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts, Edward Perry Warren and John Marshall, Sir Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, Noel Coward and Cecil Beaton. Richly illustrated and written in a lively and accessible manner, Bachelors of a different sort is at once theoretically ambitious and rich in its use of archival and various historical sources.
About the AuthorJohn Potvin is Director of the Humanities PhD Program and Associate Professor in Art History at Concordia University
AwardsWinner of Historians of British Art book prize for a single-author work relating to a period after 1800 2016 (UK).
Book InformationISBN 9781784991098
Author John PotvinFormat Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Manchester University PressPublisher Manchester University Press
Weight(grams) 526g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 170mm * 17mm