Transatlantic Manners: Social Patterns in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Travel Literature

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Cambridge University Press, May 17, 1990 - History - 243 pages
Christopher Mulvey has entered the world of travelers writing about their journeys abroad--Americans in their travels through England, and the English in their forays to the United States--during the eighty years following the War of 1812. The writings of travelers from one country about the other dispel the myth that good manners were a universal value and that variations were to be explained in terms of moral or political corruptions of either nation. The impact of such different yet somehow familiar cultures is highlighted in chapters that explore the contemporary issues of the nineteenth-century American woman, slavery, and the English poor. Mulvey's text draws on the writings, letters, and reports of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Adams, Matthew Arnold, and Fanny Trollope among others.

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Contents

The AngloAmerican traveller
3
PARTI AMERICAN SOCIETY
15
Merchant society
19
Planter society
33
Western man
49
American woman
61
The slave
76
The uniformity of American life
103
The aristocracy
132
The social hierarchy
147
Servants
162
The poor
172
The narrowness of English life
184
CONCLUSION
185
An AngloSaxon light
199
Notes
217

ENGLISH SOCIETY
121
The English gentleman
123

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