Manners for Men

Humphry, Mrs., -1925Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 208K words
Chapters: 21

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Manners for Men by Mrs. HumphryAuthor: Humphry, Mrs., -1925,Language: English, Class: BJ: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Ethics, Social usages, Etiquette, Religion, Release Date: Oct 11, 2016

Editor's review

Manners for Men is an early twentieth-century etiquette guide for men by Mrs. Humphry, available as a public-domain e-book prepared by Project Gutenberg. The book sets out the period's norms for men's speech, conduct, and social occasions, and bears a clear mark of its time: it is both a practical manual of manners and a text for observing social customs from the late Victorian to the Edwardian era. Its value lies not in rules to be applied directly today, but in showing how etiquette was systematically taught and what assumptions about class, gender, and public image it carried. Read it as material for social and everyday life history, set it against modern ideas of manners, and distinguish what is obsolete from what still has reference value. The prose is strongly didactic and suits readers with historical interests who read with an analytical eye.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in early twentieth-century British social customs
Enthusiasts of etiquette history, gender, and everyday life
Readers who enjoy old-fashioned didactic English and comparing past with present

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking a modern guide to business or social etiquette
Casual readers expecting a light, humorous style
Readers with limited English who need clear modern texts

Reading tips

Read with a historical lens: note outdated rules and compare them with contemporary practice.
Read by topic, skipping between chapters such as table manners, conversation, and public places.
Take brief notes afterward, separating practical advice from period prejudice.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Do the etiquette rules in this book still apply today?

Most specific rules are clearly tied to their era and should not be copied directly. Yet the underlying concern for respecting others and minding one's setting still has reference value; read with discernment, separating period custom from general principle.

Is the English in this book hard to read?

The text is early twentieth-century English with long sentences and a markedly didactic tone, though the vocabulary is generally not obscure. Readers with intermediate English can work through it with a dictionary, focusing on understanding rather than speed.

Why read an outdated etiquette book?

It serves as social history, helping readers understand how men were expected to behave in public and private and what ideas of class and gender lay behind etiquette. It also offers concrete period detail for writers and researchers.

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About the author

Humphry, Mrs., -1925 Author · British

Mrs. Humphry (d. 1925) was a British writer on etiquette. Her full name and exact dates of birth and death are not clearly recorded in publicly available sources, and verifiable information about her is quite limited. Two of her works are held in the collection: Manners for Men and A Word to Women. Both deal with everyday standards of conduct and social courtesy, offering guidance on behavior and speech to male and female readers respectively. In subject matter her writing continues the tradition of British etiquette books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, relying mainly on practical rules and admonitory advice and serving the middle-class demand for norms of social interaction at the time. Today such works are consulted chiefly as historical sources for the social manners and gender attitudes of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, while few detailed records of her own life have survived.