The Sitwells: John Pearson

Few families have  cultivated such eccentricity, created such controversy and achieved such notoriety as the Sitwells - Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell. In this fascinating family biography, John Pearson tell this story of an unholy trinity. As poets, memoirists, critic and patrons, the aristocratic Sitwells were a formidable and always entertaining part of life throughout the 20th century. They conceived themselves as arbiters of taste, commandant of the avant-garde in its perpetual battle with the Philistines and the centre of English cultural life. To a remarkable extent they succeeded in their aim - as early as 1923 a newspaperman would write: They are all poets. But they are more than that - they are a cult. D.H. Lawrence, Cecil Beaton, Diaghilev, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Noel Coward - these and many more appeared in their lives as allies, enemies and proteges.  This is a delightful recounting of the Sitwells' stunts, eccentricities, feud, ecapades and a social history of an era seen through its most remarkable exponents. Photographic illustrations.

1st U.S. edition by Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich 1978; hardback; dust jacket not price-clipped; small tear in dust jacket neatly repaired; a little foxing to block; tightly bound and clean within