[To "Voices from 19th-Century America"]

Eliza Leslie (1787-1858) was an astonishingly prolific writer for children and for adults. For children, she wrote stories and articles published in such magazines as Youth's Companion and Parley's Magazine, and in gift books like The Pearl; or, Affection's Gift, as well as collections of games and activities like The American Girl's Book. For adults she wrote a novel (Amelia; or, A Young Lady's Vicissitudes) and a number of stories, edited at least one gift book (The Gift, which printed stories by Edgar Allan Poe), and wrote several books giving advice on everything from cooking to housekeeping and etiquette.

The Behaviour Book is more than just a look at mid-19th-century rules of etiquette. Leslie covers the wide range of daily life: four pages are devoted to selecting an umbrella (green silk ones weren't colorfast); she includes instructions for making a good black ink; and bed-making gets half a page. It's a chatty book, full of anecdotes (George Washington telling a tall tale to a credulous traveler) and one-paragraph essays on subjects like having a bedroom window open and how to refer to black servants. It's also a wealth of anecdotal information about Leslie's native Philadelphia, including a child's rhyme listing its principal streets. The two chapters on how to treat writers and how to become a writer probably answered questions Leslie had heard over and over.

The Behaviour Book went through at least three editions by 1859. My copy apparently is of the first edition, of 1853; a later edition was reproduced by the Arno Press in 1972. There are differences between the two: my copy has 310 pages, while the later edition has 336; the later edition includes a fascinating chapter on parties, and some details were changed.