The Comedy of Manners: Society, observed and skewered

The literature of drawing rooms and social maneuvering — from Austen and Thackeray to Wilde and Wharton, where the stakes are reputation and the weapon is wit.

In this collection

• On Alexandrines. a Letter to some Country Cousins
• Great City Snobs
• On Half a Loaf. a Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of New York, Bankers
• The Fatal Boots
• The Influence of the Aristocracy on Snobs
• Foring Parts
• Bunner Sisters
• To Milton
• The True Knowledge
• Uses
• The Master
• The Limitations of Genius
• The Tomb of Ilaria Giunigi
• The Sonnet
• On some Respectable Snobs Ii
• For Love of the King
• Snobs and Marriage Iii
• Tædium Vitæ
• A Journey
• A Meeting
• At Verona
• Early Christian Art in Ireland
• Holy Week at Genoa
• Abd-El-Kader at Toulon. or, the Caged Hawk
• All collections