English Eccentrics and Eccentricities

by John Timbs

English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, published in 1866, is John Timbs's gallery of odd lives, arranged under headings: wealth and fashion, delusions and impostures, strange sights and sporting scenes, eccentric artists, theatrical folk, men of letters and convivial eccentricities. Here are the Beckfords and Fonthill, Beau Brummell, Romeo Coates the amateur tragedian, the spendthrift squire John Mytton, the misers of Hackney and Pentonville, Gretna Green marriages, the Agapemone or Abode of Love and dozens of forgotten characters whose oddities Timbs gathered from newspapers, memoirs and his own long career as a London journalist. He writes short, anecdotal entries rather than connected narrative, and the book can be opened anywhere. It is a compendium of the strangeness of English life before the Victorians tidied it. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.