Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners: Compliments, Charades & Horrible…

I was originally looking for a guide to Regency etiquette, and this doesn't quite fit the bill, but Josephine Ross' sweet little rulebook is still a treat for Austen fans. The Guide to Good Manners covers the basics, like 'dancing and dining', 'dress and taste', marriage, family and servants, with reference to Miss Jane Austen's family letters and quotes from her novels. I learned two important details - displaying good manners requires only common sense and a respect for others, and the propriety expected of young women in the Regency era was 'not to hinder, but to protect'. I think we would all do well to emulate our genteel ancestors and behave with such decency and care today!

Jane Austen's Guide is an inspirational companion to the novels, prettily illustrated, which would make a lovely gift. ( )

If you are a Janeite, this is a very insightful compilation of regency mores and etiquette to guide you along and show you how Jane perceived the world and how her writing commented upon it. That is one of the many things that Austen is credited with, that her books are studies in the society of the time, and give us now a view of a kinder, more genteel period.

Since the Austen Canon, unlike the Dickens Canon, provides a look at a very well to do part of society, mostly that of perhaps the lower upper class, which Jane was a member of, we do not see often the picture of the vast majority of England, nor do we get a sliver of the Regency other then through Jane's wishes for it.

Here we have to then focus on what the book's title tells us. Jane Austen's Guide. Not a Guide to the Regency, or even the entire Ton, for where Mr. Darcy is of the first quality, and we become intimate with him in Pride and Prejudice, Jane gives us the Ton as she wants it to be. Not always as it was. And by extension so does our authoress.

If we can put aside that the book does not dwell on the true Regency era, but on the world that Jane created for us to read two hundred years later, then we have a pretty little world and the description of it is well done. Excerpts from the book abound and small drawings that help uncover more of the detail of what is being talked of.

The book is a useful resource to get a glimpse of the period, but I would not take the book as anything other then Jane's fantasy world. It is not the entirety of the Regency World, nor is it even a solid glimpse of the world that Jane lived in. It is the world she wrote of and we do not even know if that was the world she ascribed to. ( )

This brief guide to proper etiquette in Jane Austen's era is based on Austen's correspondence with her niece, Anna. Using illustrations from both Austen's novels and letters, Ross describes proper conduct in the following areas: forms of introduction, calling and conversation, dancing and dining, dress and taste, matrimony, family, and servants. This little book isn't meant to be a definitive work on the rules of society in Austen's day. The excerpts from novels and letters, the delightful illustrations, and the book ribbon bound with the book, all indicate that it is best suited as a gift item. Warmly recommended as a gift for a young lady just discovering the pleasures of Austen's novels, or for the bedside table in a guest room. ( )

http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/jane-austens-guide-to-good-manners... ( )

An adorable and quick read for Jane Austen fans. Though it is by no means an all-encompassing guide to the manners of the Regency era, it will amuse you for a few hours, which is about how much time you'll need to finish this little book. ( )