Eccentric Lives, Peculiar Notions

Michell, John

ISBN 10: 1579122280 / ISBN 13: 9781579122287

Published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (edition ), 2002

With dust jacket. It's a preowned item in good condition and includes all the pages. It may have some general signs of wear and tear, such as markings, highlighting, slight damage to the cover, minimal wear to the binding, etc., but they will not affect the overall reading experience. Seller Inventory # 1579122280-11-1-29

Synopsis:

Never has so much energy been poured into such oddly misbegotten ideas, inventions, enterprises and movements. The 22 individuals and groups documented in this book with such wit and sympathy represent the widest range of true eccentricity, including: - Persistent lover John Rutter Carden of Tipperary, who abducted an heiress - Sir Ian Stuart Knill of Burnham-on-Sea who claimed he was descended from King Arthur - Lady Blount of Kingston who surveyed the Bedford Levels to prove the Earth was flat - Colonel Sibthorp, MP for Lincoln, who opposed every Act and Reform in Parliament - Nesta Webster of Hertfordshire who (in the 1920s) invented Conspiracy Theory - Sir Francis Galton, whose crusaded for thoroughbred humans and pioneered Eugenics - Geoffrey Pyke from Suffolk, who invented battleships made of ice during WW1 - Comyns Beaumont who claimed the Holy Land was actually in Scotland - Edward Hine who created the myth that British people are the lost tribe of Israel - Amanda Fielding from London who invented trepanation - drilling a hole in your head! - Baconians v. Stratfordians - the strange legacy of the 'Bacon wrote Shakespeare' theorists * Well written, lively narrative non-fiction in short entertaining biographies of British eccentrics. Author lives in London.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Eccentric Lives, Peculiar Notions
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (edition )
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included