ADVICE TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN on entering society…

FIRST BRITISH EDITION. 12mo, pp. 144, 18 'Catalogue' (final page misbound after p. 144) original brown cloth, rebacked with new endpapers, the upper cover with the title enclosing an image of a 'gentleman'.


Unrecorded first British edition of this etiquette book, whose subtitle could have been 'on getting ahead in society.'

The anonymous American author gives in six chapters, on Character, Company, Manners, Conversation, Travel and Letters, a guide to elevating oneself in society. This is not the same text as the American edition, as all allusions to America and various quotes have been cut from the text, the British editor has also done a little infilling in order to make the work more palatable to an 'English' reader.

The New York Mirror fairly damned the work in its review of May 1839:- 'The author of this little volume evidently belongs to the school of Rochefoucault [sic] and Chesterfield. His advice is admirably calculated to teach "the manners of a monkey and the morals of a rascal". The young man should gather his rules of conduct from these fatherly monitions would a mingled compound of the Jesuit, the coward, and the scamp.' The British reviews were however fairly positive which says a lot either for the judicious editing of the text or the morals inclinations of each nation!

The work was first issued at Philadelphia under the imprint of Lea and Blanchard about May 1839 before reappearing in Britain under the same title and first advertised as 'this day published' on the 6th August 1839. The publisher was Alfred Head Baily (1808-1884), he was the nephew of the stockbroker, traveller and astronomer Francis Arthur Baily (1774-1844) who quite possibly helped by him in setting up the publishing business in Cornhill close by the stock exchange. Here Alfred with his brother produced a series of book,s chiefly aimed at the fashionable and sporting fraternity, best exemplified in their most successful publication Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes.

Not in OCLC, which records the second edition only (BL only)