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Article: To the Manner Born: The Real Story of Emily Post.(Society; CULTURE)(Biography)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- October 27, 2008
- Author:
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Byline: Jennie Yabroff
From divorcee to arbiter of etiquette for the American masses, Emily Post reinvented herself, and much else. We owe her a thank-you note.
In the 1922 original edition of "Etiquette," Emily Post's guide to the practices and manners of "Best Society," 81 pages are devoted to all matters nuptial. There's a sad irony, then, to the fact that Emily Post became the foremost authority on etiquette as the result of an unhappy marriage. In 1905, as biographer Laura Claridge recounts in "Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners," Post's husband, Edwin, was the victim of a blackmail ploy by a newspaper publisher ...