What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England by Daniel Pool  (63)
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
"Dancing and etiquette are inseparable," wrote one 19th-century dancing master quoted in this scholarly glimpse into ballrooms past. Newly moneyed Americans of that era craved guidance on how to comport themselves, and publishers responded with scores of manuals on etiquette, fashion and dance instruction. As dance historian Aldrich demonstrates through more than 100 excerpts from these guides, balls and dance offer a key to understanding the social aspirations of the period. These volumes gave unflinching advice, from injunctions against nose-picking to the proper way to lead a partner through the quadrilles. In a brief historical essay, Aldrich dissolves the veneer of naivete from these admonitions, placing them in the context of a society in which woman's role had become centered on domestic affairs and in which the ballroom was the showcase for one's social accomplishments. But while Aldrich supplies quotations at length, her attenuated analysis of these mores and of the dances themselves--from the initially notorious waltz to the "German," whose figures offered a strange representation of relations between the sexes--fails to illuminate their underlying ethos. Illustrated.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"Dancing and etiquette are inseparable," wrote one 19th-century dancing master quoted in this scholarly glimpse into ballrooms past. Newly moneyed Americans of that era craved guidance on how to comport themselves, and publishers responded with scores of manuals on etiquette, fashion and dance instruction. As dance historian Aldrich demonstrates through more than 100 excerpts from these guides, balls and dance offer a key to understanding the social aspirations of the period. These volumes gave unflinching advice, from injunctions against nose-picking to the proper way to lead a partner through the quadrilles. In a brief historical essay, Aldrich dissolves the veneer of naivete from these admonitions, placing them in the context of a society in which woman's role had become centered on domestic affairs and in which the ballroom was the showcase for one's social accomplishments. But while Aldrich supplies quotations at length, her attenuated analysis of these mores and of the dances themselves--from the initially notorious waltz to the "German," whose figures offered a strange representation of relations between the sexes--fails to illuminate their underlying ethos. Illustrated.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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6
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- Choreography & Narrative: Ballet's Staging of Story and Desire by Susan Leigh Foster in Back Matter
- Movement for Actors by Nicole Potter in Back Matter
- I See America Dancing: Selected Readings, 1685-2000 by Maureen Needham on page 92
- Something in the Way She Moves: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna by Wendy Buonaventura in Back Matter
- Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism by Sally Banes in Back Matter
See all 6 books citing this book