"What would Emily Post do?" Even today, Americans cite the author
of the perennial bestseller "Etiquette" as a touchstone for proper
behavior. But who was the woman behind the myth, the authority on
good manners who has outlasted all comers? Award-winning author
Laura Claridge presents the first authoritative biography of the
unforgettable woman who changed the mindset of millions of
Americans, an engaging book that sweeps from the Gilded Age to the
1960s.
Born shortly after the Civil War, Emily Post was a daughter of high
society, the only child of an ambitious Baltimore architect, Bruce
Price, and his wellborn wife. Within a few years of his daughter's
birth, Price moved his family to New York City, where they mingled
with the Roosevelts and the Astors as well as with the new crowd in
town-J. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt clan. Blossoming into one of
Manhattan's most sought-after debutantes, Emily went on to marry
Edwin Post, planning to re-create in her own home the happiness
she'd observed between her parents. Instead, she would find herself
in the middle of a scandalous divorce, its humiliating details
splashed across the front pages of New York newspapers for months.
Traumatic though it was, the end of her marriage forced Emily Post
to become her own person. She would spend the next fifteen years
writing novels and attending high-powered literary events alongside
the likes of Mark Twain and Edith Wharton, but in middle age she
decided she would try something different.
When it debuted in 1922 with a tiny first print run, "Etiquette"
represented a fifty-year-old woman at her wisest-and a country at
its wildest. Claridge addresses the secret of "Etiquette's"
tremendous success and gives us a panoramic view of the culture
from which "Etiquette "took its shape, as its author meticulously
updated her book twice a decade to keep it consistent with
America's constantly changing social landscape.
A tireless advocate for middle-class and immigrant Americans, Emily
Post became the emblem of a new kind of manners in which etiquette
and ethics were forever entwined. Now, nearly fifty years after her
death, we still feel her enormous influence on how we think Best
Society should behave.""
Praise for "Emily Post"
"Given the ubiquitousness of her repeatedly revised magnum opus,
"Etiquette," first published in 1922, we think of Emily Post as an
institution rather than a human being. But she was a woman of
substance and sensitivity. The first to fully portray this pioneer,
Claridge is becoming the sort of biographer readers will follow
anywhere, and one hopes she'll continue in the vein that yielded
"Norman Rockwell" (2001) and now this absorbing study of a keenly
perceptive ethicist second only to Eleanor Roosevelt in the
immensity of her influence. A child of privilege born in the wake
of the Civil War, smart and beautiful Emily Price married a rascal.
The pain and humiliation of her divorce from Edwin Post fostered
her devotion to writing (she was a successful novelist) and seeded
the compassion and advocacy for women that shaped her highly moral
approach to etiquette. Claridge chronicles Post's remarkable
ability to discern the needs of a Claridge chronicles Post's
remarkable ability to discern the needs of a burgeoning American
public transformed by immigration, industrialization, war, and
women's and civil rights, and hungry for guidance in social and
familial situations. A best-selling writer and hugely popular radio
personality, Post equated etiquette with character and ensured a
'democratization of manners.' Claridge greatly deepens our
appreciation for Post's achievements and brings forward the
impressive woman behind the do's and don'ts." ---Donna Seaman,
"Booklist "(starred review)
"It was the genius of Emily Post to show us that manners are the
small coin of morality....Emily Post became perhaps the most
important and certainly the most influential moralist of the 20th
century. It is Laura Claridge's genius to explain the surprising
and improbable background and equally amazing personality of Emily
Post." -- P.J. O'Rourke, author of "Modern Manners: An Etiquette
Book for Rude People""
"
"What she [Claridge] has given us is not only a canny and
insightful read, but when she calls her Emily 'a domestic
anthropologist, ' you know she's right. Brava!"-Nancy Milford,
author of "Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay"
"Laura Claridge has given us so much more than a mere biography of
this august arbiter of good manners; [She] has flung open the doors
of an entire society -- she has shown us in enchanting, mesmerizing
detail how the modern city of New York was built and made." --
Carolyn See, author of "Making a Literary Life"
..". a biography as rich and engaging as a portrait by John Singer
Sargent." -- Daniel Mark Epstein, author of "The Lincolns: Portrait
of a Marriage""
""Laura Claridge's masterful "Emily Post" tells the story of a
lively heroine, raised in a Gilded Age New York of silk-stockings
and debutante balls, who wrote one of the enduring bestsellers of
the 20th century.... Laura Claridge's vivid, graceful biography of
Emily Post is an essential contribution to American social
history." ----Eric Homberger, author of" Mrs. Astor's New York
"
"From the Hardcover edition."
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