"poser" (before 1990?)

[Paul Frank]

For what it's worth:

But hard men, comparative strangers, do not weep around the death-bed either
of a "fiend," or of a merely cold, selfish, indifferent man, a " poser," or
even a mere artist, as the companions of Byron wept around his death-bed at
Mesolonghi.
        Roden Noel, Life of Lord Byron, Walter Scott Publishing, 1890, p.
189.

[Of Thoreau] He has been regarded as an American Diogenes and a rural
Barnum; as a narrow Puritan, as a rebel against Puritanism, as a
German-Puritan romanticist; as a sentimentalist; as a poet-naturalist; as a
hermit worshiping Nature; as an anarchistic dreamer; as a loafer, as a
poser, as a prig and skulker; as a cynic, as a stoic, as an epicurean.
        Norman Foerster, Nature in American Literature: Studies in the
Modern View of Nature, Macmillan, 1923, p. 69.

Susan hated her mother because she felt that she was a poser and a social
climber.
        Case Studies of Normal Adolescent Girls, D. Appleton, 1933, p. 221.

He was a poser, a wearer of clothes, forever acting a part, striving to
create an impression, to draw attention to himself.
        Frank Norris, The Octopus, Sagamore Press, 1957, p. 68.

Paul
______________________________________
Paul Frank
English translation
from Chinese: humanities and the social sciences
from German, French, and Spanish: sinology
www.languagejottings.blogspot.com
e-mail: paulfrank at post.harvard.edu