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stonecoldjaneausten's review against another edition
2.0
It feels bizarre to give a rating at all for a book which I read as an historical artefact - like examining an old costume, my own personal unwillingness to wear it shouldn't really matter. But I enjoy reading various older etiquette books, and this one takes the cake for snarkiness and thinly-veiled gossip. An entire chapter on how not to annoy your female author acquaintances? Subtly done, Miss Leslie...
book_bear's review against another edition
5.0
Awesome insight as to the thinking of society back in the 1800s!
the_chaotic_witch's review
5.0
Witty, engaging, charming. If you are interested in mid-19th century etiquette this is the book for you.
This is obviously nonfiction but it is so fluent and easy to read a d bursting with a humour you wouldn't expect from a work so old.
As far as accuracy goes I can't really evaluate but trusting the book on that point I think it is a wonderful look into the lives of women and also men in that period of time.
Highly recommend if you like Austen, Brontë and younger works!
This is obviously nonfiction but it is so fluent and easy to read a d bursting with a humour you wouldn't expect from a work so old.
As far as accuracy goes I can't really evaluate but trusting the book on that point I think it is a wonderful look into the lives of women and also men in that period of time.
Highly recommend if you like Austen, Brontë and younger works!
kates's review
3.0
I am fairly positive that "Eliza Leslie" is actually Lady Catherine de Bourgh (an antebellum Lady Catherine from Philadelphia, to be sure, but stranger things have happened). There is something regally ridiculous about her narrative voice.
Some choice edicts:
"No colours are more ungenteel, or in worse taste, than reddish lilacs, reddish purples, and reddish browns."
"Above all, do not travel in white kid gloves. Respectable women never do."*
"Ladies no longer eat salt-fish at a public-table."
"Pouring butter-sauce over any thing is now ungenteel."
"We doubt if in the present day the talk and manners of Johnson would have been tolerated in really good society."
"Beware of trusting an infant, too confidingly, to an European nurse."
"Dancing at weddings is old-fashioned."
The Ladies' Guide is an interesting cultural artifact. Painful to read, in places--Miss Leslie, as well as being entertaining, is misogynistic and implacably racist.
*Happy to say I have NEVER ONCE contravened this injunction!! Clearly am naturally respectable.
Some choice edicts:
"No colours are more ungenteel, or in worse taste, than reddish lilacs, reddish purples, and reddish browns."
"Above all, do not travel in white kid gloves. Respectable women never do."*
"Ladies no longer eat salt-fish at a public-table."
"Pouring butter-sauce over any thing is now ungenteel."
"We doubt if in the present day the talk and manners of Johnson would have been tolerated in really good society."
"Beware of trusting an infant, too confidingly, to an European nurse."
"Dancing at weddings is old-fashioned."
The Ladies' Guide is an interesting cultural artifact. Painful to read, in places--Miss Leslie, as well as being entertaining, is misogynistic and implacably racist.
*Happy to say I have NEVER ONCE contravened this injunction!! Clearly am naturally respectable.
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