THE DESCENT OF MANNERS

R250.00

ETIQUETTE, RULES & THE VICTORIANS

A daringly original and illuminating book, the first study of the subtle binding, codes that ruled all aspects of nineteenth century life.

Do manners make man (and woman), the Victorians certainly thought so. According to John Stuart Mill, the English, more than any other people, not only act, but feel according to rule. Provoked by Mill’s analysis Andrew St George shows that manners not only governed the way the Victorians talked, dressed, furnished their houses and courted their wives, but also structured the way they saw their world, judged their achievements and expressed their inner thoughts in fiction and poetry.

Such codes, as Disraeli knew, could also be instruments of government, bonds or cohesion and community in times of change: etiquette as class controls, St George links etiquette books and sermons to the Great Contagious Disease Acts, indicators of ideas about women, the home and sexuality. He traces the principles behind the new democratic manners of America: considers financial speculation and scandal, explores the way that literature, art and post-Darwinian science, in different ways, pushed back the boundaries of what cold be said and done, until manners evolved, or descend into the flamboyance, and uncertainties of 1890’s decadence.

Written with flair and humour, The Descent of Manners is vivid and absorbing, combining bold ideas and careful scholarship to map an uncharted area of social history.

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Description

Authored by Andrew St. George, published by Chatto & Windus of London in 1983. Hard cover bound this First Edition copy is in Fine condition, covered in plastic, with a Fine dust jacket. The size of the book is 240x162x26mm, with 330 pages including the index, and notes. ISBN 9780701136239. Appears unread. No illustrations.