Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain, The British Library - exhibition review

The British Library’s exhibition covers the period 1714-1830, during which Britain lost its medieval whiff and London became a modern city
6 December 2013

Pretty girl snares an earl. Goes to a party semi-naked; gets papped. Ditches the earl for a duke; convicted of bigamy. Publishes her memoirs with a sensational naked picture. Familiar? Yes; but the girl, Elizabeth Chudleigh, was born in 1722.

Chudleigh is just one character tumbling out of the British Library’s exhibition covering the period 1714-1830, during which Britain lost its medieval whiff and London became a modern city.

Using 200 exhibits, the library focuses on what it knows best — books — but richly tempered with artefacts, to evoke this era of irrevocable change. Britain’s population trebled to 24 million; London’s population exploded, and shopping (along with sex) became the middle-class obsession, in new well-lit emporiums with plate-glass windows. From Fortnum & Mason (opened 1707) to Burlington Arcade (1819), everything was on sale from teas to titfers.

At assemblies and masquerades, in theatres and fashionable shops, all classes rubbed shoulders, and it was all recorded in illustrated books, newspapers, handbills and prints, plus the first fashion plates and shopping catalogues. These tomes conjure the achievement and enjoyment of the time. Here the coffee shops to eat or pick up crumpet; here the real leather trunk of society rake Scrope Davis, who fled England for debt, leaving behind piles of bills and his pathetic kid gloves; here Fanny Burney’s 1783 novel Cecilia, the pre-story for Pride and Prejudice. From Beau Brummel to Harry Styles, leap 300 years in the flick of a fan.

Until March 11, 2014 (020 7412 7332, bl.uk)

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