The nineteenth-century Romantic myth of Bohemia emerged to describe the new conditions faced by
artists and writers who after the previous system of aristocratic patronage collapsed were
free to move around in search of success. Yet most real-life bohemians have scant interest in
commercial gain and are not so itinerant after all. Tracing these contradictions in bohemian
cultures and lifestyles from the early nineteenth century to the present David Weir explores
the myth of Bohemia as it developed in various forms of expression--novels plays operas
films--and in key cities including Paris Munich and New York. Weir concludes with a
discussion of the legacy of Bohemia today as something outworn and dying an exhausted
tradition that somehow continues.
