The dandy is a Janus-headed figure: one half still imprisoned in the habitus and mentality of the 18th century, and the other half a maverick breaking through the class barriers imposed by the nobility. The new porousness of the world of the nobility cut off the dandy as a social type from his origins. This volume examines various manifestations and transformations of the dandy in the 19th and 20th centuries and presents biographies of some well-known dandies.