Society as I Have Found It
New York: Cassell Publishing Company, (1890). First printing. Frontispiece portrait. Original cloth over boards. Octavo. xvi, 469 pages.
Ward McAllister was a popular arbiter of social taste during the Gilded-Age in New York. He coined the phrase "The Four Hundred" to denote the fashionable people in New York, declaring that this was the maximum number of people who really mattered in high society.
McAllister was a pioneer summer colonist in Newport, Rhode Island, and was largely responsible for making it a Mecca for the pleasure-seeking, status-conscious rich of New York's Gilded-Age.
This book is filled with his recollections among the elites of society, both in New York and Newport, but its publication brought his downfall. They resented the invasion of their privacy and McAllister's apparent eagerness to trade it for publicity. McAllister died five years later in social disgrace, dining alone at New York's Union Club.
Bound in blue cloth over boards with spine and upper board stamped in gilt and brown, top edge gilt. Mild browing to spine, some minor soiling to boards, shallow bumps to spine ends, and a few slight extremity rubs. There is a vertical crease to front free endpaper. Hinges sound. Very good .condition.
Item #1446
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