The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.
Smoking in the nineteenth century underwent many amusing changes, per the advice of etiquette books. Where once guides to modern behavior stressed how vulgar it was to smoke, when ladies took up the habit, it behooved these arbiters of social instruction to catch up with the times.
From 1844’s Hints on etiquette and the usages of [...]
In the summer of 1885, Karl Pearson founded The Men and Women’s Club with the aim to discuss “all matters…connected with the mutual position and relation of men and women.” Pearson drew his members from middle-class liberals, socialists, and feminists, and over the lifespan of the club (1885-1889), discussions ranged from sexual relations in Periclean [...]
After reading The New York Magazine’s list of the Top 20 Chef Empires, and perusing a few culinary books I’d borrowed from the library, I was struck, dumbstruck actually, that all save one of those twenty names are those of men. Many would argue that the age of modern cookery was of the turn of [...]
Unlike women’s fashions, traditional articles of gentleman’s clothing changed very little; the only concession to the passing of time were tiny details: a new cut to trousers, a new shape to a jacket, etcetera. As it had since the turn of the nineteenth century, colors remained fairly dark, the only places allotted for color, the [...]
