Phaeton is the early 19th-century term for a sporty open carriage

Carriage

A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, since they are wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light,...

 drawn by a single horse or a pair, typically with four extravagantly large wheels, very lightly sprung, with a minimal body, fast and dangerous. It usually had no sidepieces in front of the seats. The rather self-consciously classicizing

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 name refers to the disastrous ride of mythical Phaëton

Phaëton

In Greek mythology, Phaëton or Phaethon was the son of Helios and the Oceanid Clymene. Alternate, less common genealogies make him a son of Clymenus by Merope, of Helios and Rhode or of Helios and Prote....

, son of Helios

Helios

Helios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...

, who set the earth on fire while attempting to drive the chariot of the sun.

The most spectacular phaeton was the English four-wheeled high flyer. The mail and spider phaetons were much more conservatively constructed. The mail phaeton was used chiefly to convey passengers with luggage and was named for its construction, using "mail" springs originally designed for use on mail coach

Mail coach

In Great Britain, the mail coach or post coach was a horse-drawn carriage that carried mail deliveries, from 1784. In Ireland, the first mail coach began service from Dublin in 1789. The coach was drawn by four horses and had seating for four passengers inside. Further passengers were later allowed...

es. The spider phaeton, of American origin and made for gentlemen drivers, had a very high carriage of light construction, with a covered seat in front and a footman

Footman

A footman is a male servant, notably as domestic staff.-Word history:The name derives from the attendants who ran beside or behind the carriages of aristocrats, many of whom were chosen for their physical attributes. They ran alongside the coach to make sure it was not overturned by such obstacles...

's seat behind. Fashionable phaetons used at horse shows included the Stanhope

Stanhope (carriage)

The stanhope was a gig, buggy or light phaeton, typically having a high seat and closed back. It was named after Captain Hon. Henry FitzRoy Stanhope The stanhope was a gig, buggy or light phaeton, typically having a high seat and closed back. It was named after Captain Hon. Henry FitzRoy Stanhope...

, typically having a high seat and closed back, and the Tilbury

Tilbury (carriage)

A tilbury is a light, open, two-wheeled carriage, with or without a top, developed in the early 19th century by the London firm of Tilbury, coachbuilders in Mount Street...

, a light two-wheeled carriage with an elaborate spring suspension system, with or without a top.

Phaetons in real life and fiction

Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

 revolutionaries used a phaeton in order to get away after carrying out the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery

1907 Tiflis bank robbery

The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, also known as the Yerevan Square expropriation, was an armed robbery by Bolshevik revolutionaries of a bank cash shipment in the Georgian city of Tiflis . The robbery occurred on 26 June 1907 in Yerevan Square...

.

Each June, during the official Queen's Birthday celebrations, Queen Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...

 travels to and from Trooping the Colour

Trooping the Colour

Trooping the Colour is a ceremony performed by regiments of the British and the Commonwealth armies. It has been a tradition of British infantry regiments since the 17th century, although the roots go back much earlier. On battlefields, a regiment's colours, or flags, were used as rallying points...

 on Horse Guards Parade

Horse Guards Parade

Horse Guards Parade is a large parade ground off Whitehall in central London, at grid reference . It is the site of the annual ceremonies of Trooping the Colour, which commemorates the monarch's official birthday, and Beating Retreat.-History:...

 in an ivory-mounted phaeton carriage made in 1842 for her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....

.

Phaetons rarely appear in movies, but a very glamorous one, painted yellow and driven by the character Mr. Willoughby, made an appearance in Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility (1995 film)

Sense and Sensibility is a 1995 British drama film directed by Ang Lee. The screenplay by Emma Thompson is based on the 1811 novel of the same name by English author Jane Austen...

, 1995, based on the Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

 novel of 1811

Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, is a British romance novel by Jane Austen, her first published work under the pseudonym, "A Lady." Jane Austen is considered a pioneer of the romance genre of novels, and for the realism portrayed in her novels, is one the most widely read writers in...

. It perfectly exemplifies Mr. Willoughby's reckless and dashing character, although in the book he actually drives a curricle

Curricle

A curricle was a smart, light two-wheeled chaise or "chariot", large enough for the driver and a passenger and— most unusual for a vehicle with a single axle—usually drawn by a carefully matched pair of horses...

.

In Frances Burney's novel Evelina

Evelina

Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is a novel written by English author Frances Burney and first published in 1778...

(1778), young gentlemen are racing their phaetons on the public highways of Clifton

Clifton, Bristol

Clifton is a suburb of the City of Bristol in England, and the name of both one of the city's thirty-five council wards. The Clifton ward also includes the areas of Cliftonwood and Hotwells...

, near Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, not without incident.

Of the irritatingly grand Lady Catherine De Bourgh in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England...

, the lickspittle Mr Collins declares, "she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies."

British author William Black published in 1862 a novel called The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, based on a driving excursion that the author made from London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

.

In the 1928 American children's book Freddy Goes to Florida

Freddy Goes to Florida

Freddy Goes to Florida , is the first of the Freddy the Pig books written by Walter R. Brooks. It tells how the animals of the Bean Farm traveled to Florida and back again, and their adventures on the way.-Plot summary:Freddy was an intelligent pig that lived on the Bean Farm...

(formerly published as To and Again) by Walter R. Brooks

Walter R. Brooks

Walter Rollin Brooks was an American writer best remembered for his short stories and children's books, particularly those about Freddy the Pig and other anthropomorphic animal inhabitants of the "Bean farm" in upstate New York.Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of...

, Hank the farm horse draws an old phaeton that carries the animals and their treasure back from Florida to the Bean farm.

In Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during, and after the Civil War, with the focus of the story on the life of Thomas Sutpen.-Plot...

by William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Sutpen's wife Ellen had a phaeton that caused her daughter to become greatly distressed when it arrived in place of their normal carriage.

In the short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

, Roger Button, Benjamin's father, owns a phaeton that is his primary mode of transportation until Benjamin buys the first automobile in Baltimore.
In Susannah Kells' novel Fallen Angels, a phaeton is the transportation of choice for the main character, Campion, who later crashes the carriage in a perfect example of its dangerous and fickle reputation.

The character Mr. Spenlow from the novel David Copperfield dies suddenly of a heart attack while driving his phaeton home.

Henry James, in his short story "An International Episode" (1878) has Lord Lambeth driven through town in "a little basket-phaeton" by his companion Bessie Aldon. "His companion when into seventeen shops - he amused himself with counting them - and acuumulated, at the bottom of the phaeton, a pile of bundles that hardly left the young Englishman a place for his feet. As she had no groom nor footman, he sat in the phaeton to hold the ponies..."