The Descent of Manners. Etiquette, Rules & The Victorians. (

London: Chatto & Windus. Very Good +/Very Good +. 1993. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0701136235 Inscribed By Author Dust jacket unclipped. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. Signed by author to title page. 330 pages clean and tight. 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 of cohesion and continuity in times of change: etiquette as class control. St George links etiquette books and sermons to the Great Exhibition and the campaign against the Contagious Diseases 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 could be said and done, until manners evolved - or descended - into the flamboyance, and uncertainties of 1890s 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. `Original and illuminating...the Victorians, eminent or obscure, are re-examined and re-assessed' Asa Briggs. .