Manners: A Satire. By Mr. Whitehead

by Paul Whitehead

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

48 pages, Hardcover

Published December 13, 2015

Reviews

[Delanie Dooms · Rating 4 out of 5]

In perusing the writing of James Boswell (in specific, his Life of Johnson) Paul Whitehead was said to be hated by Johnson; however, Boswell attempts to do him justice, insofar as he claims to like Manners. To understand what Boswell was saying a bit more, I went to find this work by Whitehead, and stumbled upon numerous small things. First, that Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary, used the term satire a bit differently than how we do today. He meant it like this: "A poem in which wickedness or folly is censured." Clearly, this is the best definition by which to label Whitehead's particular form of satire, for that is in some sense what this book is. It contains some humor, but the most important aspect is censure. I found out that Whitehead was the secretary of the Hellfire Club.

These ideas all come more to the fore than this, a book that is about people who are sometimes unnamed for legal reasons; the main purport is that virtue is more important than rank.