The Most Beautiful Man in Existence The Scandalous Life of
Alexander Lesassier Lisa Rosner "A reassuring reminder that no
single era has a corner on sexual license."--"Boston Globe"
"Remarkable. . . . Reading this book is a bit like stumbling across
a new Pepys, or discovering the journals of James Boswell."--Roy
Porter, author of "London: A Social History" "Lesassier is a rogue
more likely to pop up as a character in a Restoration comedy than
anywhere else. But in historian Lisa Rosner's hands, the trunk full
of journals he left behind provides fresh insights into the
development of the medical profession and English society in the
early 1800s."--"Boston Globe" "We are here given a vivid picture of
the medical profession at the time, an officer's life in the
British Army, and what may have been one of the more dissolute
lives of the period. We follow our often-scandalous hero from
medical training to his efforts to obtain an army commission to his
service in places from Gibraltar to India, where he died in the
first Afghan War in 1839."--"Library Journal" 1833, Catherine Jane
Hamilton returned from India to Edinburgh to seek a divorce from
her husband, the physician Alexander Lesassier. The charge was
adultery, and proof for it lay in a trunk containing her husband's
personal papers. Catherine won her suit without difficulty and the
trunk was deposited in the library of the Royal College of
Physicians of Edinburgh. Alexander Lesassier died in 1839 during
the First Afghan War; his trunk and its contents remained untouched
for the next century and a half. It has now been opened and a
remarkable tale, told in remarkable detail, has spilled forth. The
life of Alexander Lesassier, as expertly reconstructed by Lisa
Rosner, affords startling insight into the sensibilities of an era
and of the man who, in his own eyes and those of the women who
adored him, was its most perfect creation. Affable and
self-absorbed, engaging and ignoble Lesassier was a physician,
military surgeon, and novelist, who was also a shameless
opportunist, charming scoundrel, seducer, and survivor. His is the
story of a failed medical man who wanted to be something different
and saw himself as entitled to more than he had; someone who can
always be guaranteed to make the wrong choice, and then protest
that he has done well. This fascinating and deeply absorbing book
offers rare insights into Georgian, Regency, and early Victorian
Britain through the fortunes and misfortunes, hopes and whims, of
"the most beautiful man in existence." Lisa Rosner is Professor of
History at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She is the
author of "Medical Education in the Age of Improvement: Edinburgh
Students and Apprentices, 1760-1826." 1999 288 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
15 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3486-2 Cloth $42.50s 28.00 ISBN
978-0-8122-0316-5 Ebook $42.50s 28.00 World Rights History,
Biography, Medicine, Military Science Short copy: "Reading this
book is a bit like stumbling across a new Pepys, or discovering the
journals of James Boswell."--Roy Porter, author of "London: A
Social History"
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