{"product_id":"the-first-bohemians-life-and-art-in-londons-golden-age-9781846146770","title":"The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London's Golden Age","description":"\u003cp\u003eI then sallied forth to the Piazzas in rich flow of animal spirits and burning with fierce desire ... I was quite raised  as the phrase is ... I parted with my ladies politely and came home in a glow of spirits James Boswell  In the teeming  disordered  and sexually charged square half-mile centred on Londons Covent Garden something extraordinary evolved in the eighteenth century. It was the worlds first creative Bohemia. The nations most significant artists  actors  poets  novelists  and dramatists lived here. From Soho and Leicester Square across Covent Gardens Piazza to Drury Lane  and down from Long Acre to the Strand  they rubbed shoulders with rakes  prostitutes  market people  craftsmen  and shopkeepers. It was an often brutal world full of criminality  poverty and feuds  but also of high spirits  and an intimacy that was as culturally creative as any other in history. Virtually everything that we associate with Georgian culture was produced here.  Vic Gatrells spectacular new book recreates this time and place by drawing on a vast range of sources  showing the deepening fascination with real life that resulted in the work of artists like Hogarth  Blake  and Rowlandson  or in great literary works like The Beggars Opera and Moll Flanders. The First Bohemians is illustrated by many rarely seen pictures  for Gatrell celebrates above all one of the most fertile eras in Britains artistic history. He writes about Joshua Reynolds and J. M. W. Turner as well as the forgotten figures who contributed to what was a true golden age: the men and women who briefly dazzled their contemporaries before being destroyed - or made - by this magical but also ferocious world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45657387630645,"sku":"ByrdShop_1846146771","price":72.69,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781846146770.jpg?v=1782036268","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-first-bohemians-life-and-art-in-londons-golden-age-9781846146770","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}