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25 May 2024

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All the Rage: Power, Pain, Pleasure: Stories from the Front Line of Beauty, 1860-1960 Virginia Nicholson

Virago, pp.519, 25

I had held Beauty’s sceptre, and had seen men slaves beneath it. I knew the isolation, the penalty of this greatness. Yet I owned it was an empire for which it might be well worth paying.

—Olivia Shakespear, Beauty’s Hour (1896)

All the Rage is a perfect title for a book about terrible beauty.

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