Queens of Bohemia: And Other Miss-Fits

Queens of Bohemia is a book that explores the lives of women in the 1920s London nightclub scene, featuring memoirs and interviews of women who were part of the Bohemian culture. It offers a unique insight into a generation of women who were debunking ideals of duty and self-sacrifice and learning to value their individuality.

Format: Hardback
Publication date: 23 May 2024
Publisher: The History Press Ltd

Our story begins in 1920s London, a time when women's rights were surging after the long battle for suffrage and nightclubs emerged as spaces where single women could socialize unchaperoned. This was the age of the dance craze and the gender-bending 'Flapper, who inspired the creation of the Gargoyle club, a nocturnal hunting ground for Femmes Fatales. Meanwhile, London's Bohemia was ruled by the 'Queen of Clubs, Kate Meyrick; the taboo-breaking 'Tiger Woman, Betty May; the original 'Chelsea Girl, Viva King; the artist, Nina Hamnett; the 'Euston Road Venus, Sonia Orwell; and Isabel Rawsthorne, artist, spy, pornographer, model, and muse ... to name but a few. Using previously unpublished memoirs and interviews, Queens of Bohemia creates a soundscape of voices that gives the reader a taste of their world, so exotic and yet often wracked with despair. It offers a unique insight into a generation of women for whom ideals of duty and self-sacrifice had been debunked by the horrors of war and whose morality resided in being true to oneself, as they took their struggle for freedom into the wider world and learned to value their individuality along the way.

Weight: 678g
Dimension: 241 x 167 x 35 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781803995748