Gilded City: Scandal and Sensation in Turn-of-the-Century New York - Hardcover

Dunlop, M. H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688171443 ISBN 13: 9780688171445

Publisher: William Morrow, 2000

Synopsis

The dark side of the Gilded Age is revealed in this richly narrated new view of turn-of-the century New York. American culture scholar M. H. Dunlop penetrates the psyche of New York City in the pivotal years made famous by Edith Wharton and by families like the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, unveiling a Gilded Age that was not genteel and proper but dangerous and predatory. She shows us a society whose drives and desires speak familiarly to our own.

Drawing on rare primary sources, Dunlop focuses each chapter on an event-whether infamous or near-forgotten-that showcases a singular facet of America as reflected in its most prominent city. The passions and preoccupations of the time emerge in Dunlop's edgy portraits of sensational events that riveted the public, including a wealthy society wed, ding where locals were trampled in their frenzy to watch; a bachelor dinner during which men sliced off the girl dancers' dresses; the harrowing nine-hour execution of a zoo elephant diagnosed with sexual frustration; and more.

No other book makes comparable use of the vivid and varied newspapers of the day to reveal the everyday behaviors of a broad spectrum of city people. Dunlop's account is embedded in these and other primary sources, from decorators' manuals to vice commission reports. The result is a mesmerizing story that upends familiar generalizations about the late nineteenth century and uncovers the fixations, fads, and fears of the time-the real hum of city life.

Spiced with cameos of such characters as exotic dancer Little Egypt, Stanford White, William Merritt Chase, art-collecting ex-con Eddie Stokes, the Midnight Band of Mercy (women who chloroformed cats on the streets after 8:00 P.M.), and Grover Cleveland's "mutton-fat diet" doctor, Gilded City brings to life a key era that saw the city rise to domi, nance in America. With her unerring eye for the vivid details that expose the truth of the time, M. H. Dunlop has shone a spotlight on the American mind.

About this title

About the Author

M.H. Dunlop holds a Ph.D. in American literature from George Washington University. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in nineteenth century American literature and culture at Iowa State University and has published widely on those topics. She is the author of Sixty Miles from Contentment: Traveling the Nineteenth-Century American Interior. She lives in Ames, Iows.

From Publishers Weekly

It's unclear whether Dunlop (Sixty Miles from Contentment), who teaches 19th-century American literature and culture at Iowa State University, believes she is shocking her readers with tales of greed, excess and debauchery based on her close reading of period big-city newspapers, especially the New York Herald. Certainly, readers are well aware that even beneath the veneer of Victorian propriety lay the seamier side of the human condition. Nevertheless, she demonstrates that in the years between 1880 and 1910Aan age of "big new money" where "more and larger" were important achievementsAin New York City, "there was more wealth in private hands, more stuff available to buy, more opportunity to get ahead, and more densely packed poverty than anywhere else on the face of the earth." The wealthy flaunted their jewels, held elaborate social affairs and aspired to connections with European royalty. The general public was fascinated by such conspicuous consumption, in particular by "what other Americans could be made to do in their service" in exchange for money: "rich and not so rich men [set] out to discover how many girlsAat fifteen dollars apieceAwould drop their undergarments in front of a group of men." But this same public (rich and otherwise) was constantly on the lookout for the wealthy's errors in judgment and action; a New York Herald reporter, for instance, described how Giulia Morosini, who had invited him to view her diamond-encrusted wardrobe for the upcoming social season, had the gall to suggest that, in compiling such a wardrobe, she was serving as a benefactress of social welfare and a promoter of the arts.. Dunlop has perfectly timed for what has been called a "new gilded age" her captivating and enlightening work on Americans' obsession with money and privilege. Agent, John Ware. (Nov. 28; publication of this review was delayed due to a production error)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0688171443
• ISBN 13: 9780688171445
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320