In the summer of 1814, Anna Austen approached her literary Aunt Jane asking for help with a novel set in contemporary Regency society. The project came to nothing, but the lively correspondence that developed inspires Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners. Written as if for an aspiring socialite of that time, complete with advice not to speak of the slave trade and to learn the cotillion, it puts the great novelist's era in stark clarity. A woman had strikingly less freedom then compared to today. As Ross points out, a gentlewoman was not to attempt to bring friends of different ranks together; she could not call upon any gentleman; having refused one gentleman's invitation to dance, she wasn't permitted to accept another's. After dinner, the ladies had to withdraw from the room so the men could "remain at table, to enjoy port and, it is generally assumed, conversation on such topics as sport, politics, and farming." With such rules of engagement, it is amazing that Austen could wrench such beautiful, endurable human stories out of her era. It is also clear why marriage was often such a painful institution: You didn't get a second try. Austen's novels were both a critique of this situation as well as a reflection of it. As Ross writes, she "acknowledged society's codes and rules of precedence—even while laughing at them on many occasions." Yet she could be cutting. Upon seeing a society adulteress in Bath, the "Authoress," as she is referred to throughout, wrote with a sniff: "She was highly rouged, & looked rather quietly & contentedly silly, than anything else." Today, this floozy would wind up on Glamour's "Don't" page. Back then, she wound up in Miss Austen's bad graces. This book makes clear the latter is probably the worse fate.

Review by John Freeman

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