Little known fact about me: I adore etiquette books. Rules of a society broken down in bite-sized pieces, just waiting to be used for someone's historically accurate and violently graphic monsterotica? (Or, like, literary fiction, I guess.)

This is an amalgamation of Professor Hill's advice, written originally in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, aimed at the American and English public.

[Hill] literally defined the lifestyle of a generation, a lifestyle against which the rascals of the Roaring Twenties would ultimately rebel.

Drinking, dancing and profanity are a lot of fun - I think Professor Hill was missing out.

Most of what you'll find here is either common sense ("Never pick your teeth or clean your nails in company") or the prudish conservative values you expect from the era ("Never allow the conversation at the table to drift into anything but chitchat. The consideration of deep and abstruse principles will impair digestion.")

Some, though, are an interesting look at a culture that may not be so foreign as we think, despite their fussy dinner rules. In a case of Victorians: They're Just Like Us!, I present their version of craigslist's missed connections:



Infinitely preferable to cat-calling.