Martine's Hand-book of Etiquette, and Guide to True Politeness

Martine, ArthurProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2

Word count: 280K words
Chapters: 28

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.Martine's Hand-book of Etiquette, and Guide to True Politeness by Arthur MartineAuthor: Martine, Arthur,Language: English, Class: BJ: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Ethics, Social usages, Etiquette, Religion, Release Date: May 6, 2011

Editor's review

This is a nineteenth-century etiquette manual by Arthur Martine, now reissued as a free electronic edition prepared by Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in offering standard answers for contemporary social conduct but in presenting a period's systematic imagination of propriety: everything from everyday greetings, letter writing, and table manners to comportment in public is parsed into detailed rules. Readers can see how etiquette was written into operable rules, and can also recognize that many courtesies we take for granted today have specific historical origins. The prose carries the solemn, admonitory tone of old-fashioned English, giving it a distinctive sense of period distance. It suits browsing as marginal material for social and cultural history, and as leisurely reading for those interested in the details of Victorian life. Because the book is dated, some content involves gender roles and class attitudes that require historical discernment and should not be directly transplanted into modern social life.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in nineteenth-century European and American social customs and daily life
Cultural history students studying the evolution of etiquette norms who need primary sources
General readers who enjoy old-fashioned English prose and browse it as leisure reading
Writers or translators seeking period social details

Not a good fit for

Those seeking a practical etiquette guide directly usable in modern workplaces and social settings
Readers impatient with old-fashioned admonitory tone and elaborate rules
Serious researchers expecting systematic academic analysis rather than lists of rules

Reading tips

Start with the table of contents and pick chapters on daily life, correspondence, and entertaining rather than reading every rule from the beginning.
Note points that differ markedly from contemporary habits as clues for observing social change.
When encountering statements about gender and class, first understand them in the nineteenth-century context before judging.
Read alongside etiquette books from other periods to compare how standards of propriety change with society.

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

Can the etiquette rules in this book still be used directly today?

Not directly. Many rules depend on nineteenth-century social structures, class relations, and gender divisions and may seem stiff or outdated today. Their use is more to help readers understand the historical origins and period logic of etiquette than to provide a manual for modern social conduct.

Can someone without a sociology background understand it?

Yes. The book consists mainly of itemized rules; although the language has the solemnity of old-fashioned English, the content is concrete and does not rely on technical terms. General readers can browse it as a book of customs and infer unfamiliar social terms from context.

What is the nature of this edition?

This is a free electronic edition released by Project Gutenberg, a digitized version of a public-domain book containing Arthur Martine's original English text. It includes no modern scholarly introduction or annotations, so readers must establish the historical context themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Martine, Arthur Author

Arthur Martine is an author about whom very little is publicly known: his nationality, dates of birth and death, and personal history are not clearly recorded. The only work confirmed to be associated with him is Martine's Hand-book of Etiquette, and Guide to True Politeness. The book belongs to the tradition of nineteenth-century etiquette manuals, covering rules of conduct in social settings, proper manners in receiving and dealing with others, and appropriate behavior in everyday interaction, and it bears the clear marks of its time. Such guides were common in Europe and America in that period, offering readers practical social rules to help them adapt to the increasingly refined ways of middle-class life. Martine's style is practical and orderly, setting out norms concisely in plain language, with an emphasis on guidance rather than preachiness. Given the limited sources, further details of his life and other writings remain to be verified.