During the 1800s, dance and etiquette manuals provided ordinary men and women with the keys to becoming gentlemen and ladies--and thus advancing in society. Why dance? To the insecure and status-oriented upper middle class, the ballroom embodied the perfect setting in which to demonstrate one's fitness for membership in genteel society. From the Ballroom to Hell collects over 100 little-known excerpts from dance, etiquette, beauty, and fashion manuals from the nineteenth century. Included are instructions for performing various dances, as well as musical scores, costume patterns, and the proper way to hold one's posture, fork, gloves, and fan. While of particular interest to dancers, dance historians, and choreographers, anyone fascinated by the ways and mores of the period will find From the Ballroom to Hell an endearing and informative glimpse of America's past.

This facsimile edition of a hitherto unpublished manuscript reveals a beautiful workbook of impeccable penmanship by an early nineteenth-century dancing master. The title page reads Dance Book T B. 1826.Included among the more than thirty ballroom and theater dances are examples of the shauntreuse, allemande, hornpipe, quadrille, and waltz. There are also rare dances with descriptive titles such as Pas Seul, Pas Deux, Pas Trois d'Eggville, Russian Dance, Vestris Gavotte, and Cossack Dance. The importance of the manuscript to both musicians and dancers cannot be overestimated . It includes the earliest known full-length choreographed waltz for two that, through its intricate arm positions, shows the influence of the eighteenth-century contredanse allemande. Photographed in New Zealand by John Casey. The published volume unfortunately contains some miscropped images; a corrigenda leaflet can be downloaded a href="https: //boydellandbrewer.com/media/wysiwyg/431corrigenda.pdf">here/a

Pointed Encounters establishes the literary significance of representations of dance in poetry, song, dance manuals, and fiction written between 1750 and 1830. Presenting original readings of canonical texts and fresh readings of neglected but significant literary works, this book traces the complicated role of social dancing in Scottish culture and identifies the hitherto unexplored motif of dance as an outwardly conforming, yet covertly subversive, expression of Scottish identity during the period. The volume draws upon diverse yet mutually revealing texts, from traditional dance and music to Sir Walter Scott and contemporary Scottish women novelists, to offer students and scholars of Scottish and English literature a fresh insight into the socio-cultural context of the British state after 1746.

The "Gentleman's magazine" section is a digest of selections from the weekly press; the "(Trader's) monthly intelligencer" section consists of news (foreign and domestic), vital statistics, a register of the month's new publications, and a calendar of forthcoming trade fairs.