The Perfect Man

The Perfect Man PDF Author: David Waller
Publisher: Victorian Secrets
ISBN: 1906469253
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Eugen Sandow (1867-1925) was a Victorian strongman who was colossally famous in his day and possessed what was deemed to be the most perfect male body. He rose from obscurity in Prussia to become a music-hall sensation in late Victorian London, going on to great success as a performer in North America and throughout the British Empire. He was a friend to King Edward VII and was appointed Professor of Physical Culture to King George V. His physical culture system was adopted by hundreds of thousands around the world. He lost his fortune at the time of the First World War and he ended up being buried in an unmarked grave in Putney Vale Cemetery. There is lively interest in him on the web where his dumbells or chest-extenders sell for hundreds of pounds and an autographed photograph for thousands. Written with humour and insight into the popular culture of late Victorian England, Waller's book argues that Sandow deserves to be resurrected as a significant cultural figure whose life, like that of Oscar Wilde, tells us a great deal about sexuality and celebrity at the fin de siecle.

The Perfect Man

The Perfect Man PDF Author: David Waller
Publisher: Victorian Secrets
ISBN: 1906469253
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book

Book Description
Eugen Sandow (1867-1925) was a Victorian strongman who was colossally famous in his day and possessed what was deemed to be the most perfect male body. He rose from obscurity in Prussia to become a music-hall sensation in late Victorian London, going on to great success as a performer in North America and throughout the British Empire. He was a friend to King Edward VII and was appointed Professor of Physical Culture to King George V. His physical culture system was adopted by hundreds of thousands around the world. He lost his fortune at the time of the First World War and he ended up being buried in an unmarked grave in Putney Vale Cemetery. There is lively interest in him on the web where his dumbells or chest-extenders sell for hundreds of pounds and an autographed photograph for thousands. Written with humour and insight into the popular culture of late Victorian England, Waller's book argues that Sandow deserves to be resurrected as a significant cultural figure whose life, like that of Oscar Wilde, tells us a great deal about sexuality and celebrity at the fin de siecle.

Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man

Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man PDF Author: John F. Kasson
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429930039
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
A remarkable new work from one of our premier historians In his exciting new book, John F. Kasson examines the signs of crisis in American life a century ago, signs that new forces of modernity were affecting men's sense of who and what they really were. When the Prussian-born Eugene Sandow, an international vaudeville star and bodybuilder, toured the United States in the 1890s, Florenz Ziegfeld cannily presented him as the "Perfect Man," representing both an ancient ideal of manhood and a modern commodity extolling self-development and self-fulfillment. Then, when Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan swung down a vine into the public eye in 1912, the fantasy of a perfect white Anglo-Saxon male was taken further, escaping the confines of civilization but reasserting its values, beating his chest and bellowing his triumph to the world. With Harry Houdini, the dream of escape was literally embodied in spectacular performances in which he triumphed over every kind of threat to masculine integrity -- bondage, imprisonment, insanity, and death. Kasson's liberally illustrated and persuasively argued study analyzes the themes linking these figures and places them in their rich historical and cultural context. Concern with the white male body -- with exhibiting it and with the perils to it --reached a climax in World War I, he suggests, and continues with us today.

The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman

The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman PDF Author: David Waller
Publisher: Victorian Secrets
ISBN: 1906469369
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Strength and how to Obtain it

Strength and how to Obtain it PDF Author: Eugen Sandow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bodybuilders
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description


The blood of the vampire

The blood of the vampire PDF Author: Florence Marryat
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3756230325
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
When Anthony Pennell received the Baroness's invitation, penned in the delicate foreign handwriting of Harriet Brandt, he accepted it at once. Being out of the season, he had no engagement for that evening, but he would have broken twenty engagements, sooner than miss the chance, so unexpectedly offered him, of meeting in an intimate family circle, the girl who appeared to have led his cousin Ralph's fancy astray. He pictured her to himself as a whitey-brown young woman with thick lips and rolling eyes, and how Ralph, who was so daintily particular where the beau sexe was concerned, could have been attracted by such a specimen, puzzled Anthony altogether. The knowledge that she had money struck him unpleasantly, for he could think of no other motive for Captain Pullen having philandered with her, as he evidently had done. At anyrate, the idea that there was the least chance of allying herself with their family, must be put out of her head, at once and for ever.

Sandow the Magnificent

Sandow the Magnificent PDF Author: David L. Chapman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252020339
Category : Bodybuilders
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Before Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Reeves, or Charles Atlas, there was Eugen Sandow, a muscular vaudeville strongman who used his good looks, intelligence, and business savvy to forge a fitness empire. The German-born Sandow (1867-1925) established a worldwide string of gyms, published a popular magazine, sold exercise equipment, and pioneered the use of food supplements. He even marketed a patented health corset for his female followers. Among the colorful figures who played a part in Sandow's life are Bernarr Macfadden, Florenz Ziegfeld, Lillian Russell, and others in sports and the theater. Sandow the Magnificent is the story of this first showman to emphasize physique display rather than lifting prowess. Sandow's is also the story of the earliest days of the fitness movement, and Chapman explains the popularity of physical culture in terms of its wider social implications. Sandow was a proponent of exercise to alleviate physical ailments, anticipating the field of physical therapy. By making exercise fashionable, he encouraged the fitness craze that still endures. As the first superstar in his field, Sandow also pried open some surprising cracks in the Victorian wall of prudery. His nude photographs, a kind of soft-core pornography, were anxiously sought by both male and female admirers, and after many of his major public events he gave private "receptions" wearing little more than a G-string.

Strong as Sandow

Strong as Sandow PDF Author: Don Tate
Publisher: Triangle Interactive, Inc.
ISBN: 1684520800
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
Little Friedrich Müller was a puny weakling who longed to be athletic and strong like the ancient Roman gladiators. He exercised and exercised. But he to no avail. As a young man, he found himself under the tutelage of a professional body builder. Friedrich worked and worked. He changed his name to Eugen Sandow and he got bigger and stronger. Everyone wanted to become “as strong as Sandow.” Inspired by his own experiences body-building, Don Tate tells the story of how Eugen Sandow changed the way people think about strength and exercise and made it a part of everyday life. Backmatter includes more information about Sandow, suggestions for exercise, an author’s note, and a bibliography.

The First Adman

The First Adman PDF Author: Gary Hicks
Publisher: Victorian Secrets
ISBN: 1906469393
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The First Adman reveals the untold story of how modern advertising was pioneered 200 years ago by the entrepreneur, self-publicist and dodgy Member of Parliament, Thomas Bish. Royalty and politicians courted this early media star and society figure, who was one of the best-known men in the land and allegedly more famous than the prime minister himself. Drawing on previously inaccessible contemporary sources, Gary Hicks resurrects the Bish brand, as famous in its day as Coca-Cola is today, and explains how it started a publicity revolution. This is an entertaining and rollicking tale of an eccentric marketing genius whose extraordinary legacy survives in modern mass media.

Below the Fairy City

Below the Fairy City PDF Author: Carolyn Oulton
Publisher: Victorian Secrets
ISBN: 1906469377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The life of Jerome K. Jerome, (1859-1927) author of "Three Men in a Boat, " has been left unexplored. Oulton unearths hitherto unknown details of his early life in Walsall and follows his momentous move to the Fairy City of London, where a formative encounter with Charles Dickens influenced his choice of profession.

Hope and Glory

Hope and Glory PDF Author: Maurice Leonard
Publisher: Victorian Secrets
ISBN: 1906469385
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Dame Clara Butt (1872-1936) was one of the most celebrated singers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, a symbol of the glory of a Britain on whose Empire the sun never set. Standing an Amazonian 6'2" tall, Clara had a glorious contralto voice of such power that when she sang in Dover, Sir Thomas Beecham swore she could be heard in Calais. A friend of the royal family, Clara was made a Dame in recognition of her sterling work during the First World War. Her rousing performances of Land of Hope and Glory brought the nation together and raised thousands of pounds for charity. In the first biography since her death, Maurice Leonard tells Dame Clara Butt's remarkable story, from humble beginnings in Sussex, to her dazzling apotheosis by an adoring nation. With humour and insight, Leonard reveals the woman behind the cultural icon.