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Victorian Era
An excerpt from The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility, 1859.

An excerpt from The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility, 1859.

This etiquette manual instructed unmarried women on being polite when conversing with men, writing a variety of letters (an important skill in middle and upper-class Victorian society), and dressing attractively for social occasions. It also included embroidery, crochet, and needlework patterns. Etiquette guides like this appealed to an aspiring young women’s desire to attain “gentility and refinement of manners in all the relations of home and society” and showcased the code of conduct and skills considered appropriate for a proper young woman in the Victorian era. This excerpt contains instructions on how a woman should, and should not, converse with men, and provides two sample “break-up letters” for use if the occasion arose.

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Citation Information
Thornwell, Emily, excerpt from “The lady's guide to perfect gentility,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/5005422453831a6269d05368e1931511.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of University of Chicago via HathiTrust.

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For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

Item 5 of 14 in the Primary Source Set Victorian Era

Previous ItemNext Item
A photograph of a Victorian home interior in Kenosha, Wisconsin, ca. 1890.
A tortoiseshell calling card case from the mid-nineteenth century.
A chromolithograph print called “Making the Scrap Book,” 1868.
An African American family record chart, 1880.
An excerpt from The Lady’s Guide to Perfect Gentility, 1859.
A print depicting a Victorian couple in love, 1850s.
A photographic portrait of Queen Victoria.
A commemorative hair and yarn wreath from Wisconsin, ca. 1879.
A post-mortem photograph of Samuel Charles Stowe, son of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1849.
A photograph of Victoria Terminus Railway Station in Mumbai (Bombay), India.
An excerpt from the London Exhibition’s “New Crystal Palace Polka,” 1851.
A dedication and poem from Victoria Regia: a Volume of Original Contributions in Poetry and Prose, 1861.
A photograph of the University of Pennsylvania cricket team, 1887.
An advertisement for Dr. Scott’s Electric Corset, 1883.

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