HIGH SOCIETY - PHOTOGRAPHS 1897-1941

HIGH SOCIETY. Photographs 1897-1914

This beautifully illustrated book explores the extravagant and eccentric world of Edwardian high society as it was recorded by the most celebrated photographers of the period. Beginning with the extraordinary images of costumed guests at the famous Devonshire House fancy-dress ball, it includes country-house groups and private theatricals; race meetings and shooting parties; the great beauties of the day and the pioneers of the motor-car. Yet this period of almost unsurpassed leisure and self-indulgence was also one of great nostalgia and romanticism, and of exceptional contrasts and complexities, in which a Gaiety Girl could become a marchioness, a titled lady be imprisoned as a suffragette and the daughter of an earl a dancer on the stage.

Terence Pepper is the Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, and the author of Norman Parkinson: Fifty Years of Portraits and Fashion, Lewis Morley: Photographer of the Sixties and Limelight - Photographs by James Abbe .

Hugo Vickers is well known as a writer and lecturer. His works include biographies of Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough, Cecil Beaton and Vivien Leigh, and he is the author of Royal Orders and The Private World of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor .