The Naughty Nineties
A taste for extravagance and lavish living, the vogues of the Prince of Wales and the Marlborough House set, the smart set, the fast set, the decadent Set, and the avant-garde - these were just some of the features of the general naughtiness which appeared on the surface of social life in the 1890s. Regency rakishness (which was only semi-hidden), middle-class Bohemianism, the cult of unregenerate 'manliness' - these were others. And, over all, there hovered the aesthetic genius of Beardsley and Morris, and the first patrons of that palace of Mammon, the Savoy Hotel, who were a roll-call of naughty nineties' society: Lord Randolph Churchill,
Lady Dudley, Barnato, Melba, Mrs Langtry, and Oscar Wilde. In words and pictures Angus Wilson brilliantly portrays the mood and tempo of that scintillating age of pleasure-seekers.