Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship: The Secrets of Seduction from Jane Austen's Most Eligible Bachelor

Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship: The Secrets of Seduction from Jane Austen's Most Eligible Bachelor

by Emily Brand
Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship: The Secrets of Seduction from Jane Austen's Most Eligible Bachelor

Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship: The Secrets of Seduction from Jane Austen's Most Eligible Bachelor

by Emily Brand

eBook

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Overview

Fitzwilliam Darcy's universally acknowledged primer for single men in possession of a good fortune, should they be in want of a wife. Perfect for fans of Bridgerton and the high society lifestyle of the Regency period.

Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship is no ordinary Regency courtship manual, composed as it is by a Fitzwilliam Darcy as yet unmellowed by contact with Elizabeth Bennet. Full of entirely justified pride and meticulously cultivated prejudice, Jane Austen's most famous (and most fancied) hero here reveals the secrets of his success with the opposite sex, offering hints to both ladies and gentlemen on the rules of courtship, including making oneself agreeable, identifying an appropriate partner and how to escape the unwanted attentions of rogues and fortune-hunters.

*Also includes: beauty tips from Caroline Bingley, thoughts on the improper courtship techniques of Messrs Wickham and Collins, reflections on spinsterhood by Miss Emma Woodhouse, and Darcy's advice to his many illustrious correspondents including Lord Byron, the Duke of Wellington and Mr Willoughby of Combe Magna.*

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781908402837
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 07/10/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 224
File size: 6 MB

About the Author


Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is a gentleman of noble blood and considerable estate, being generally owned to be the most eligible bachelor in Derbyshire.

Emily Brand is a writer and historian with a special interest in the long eighteenth century, especially English social history and romantic relationships c.1660–1837. Her most recent book The Fall of the House of Byron (John Murray, 2020) was selected as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, a Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2020 Elma Dangerfield Prize.

Emily Brand is a writer and historian with a special interest in the long eighteenth century, especially English social history and romantic relationships c.1660–1837. She has lectured on eighteenth-century seduction and women's lives at the V&A, the National Maritime Museum and the BBC History festival among others.

Her most recent book The Fall of the House of Byron (John Murray, 2020) was selected as BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week, a Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday and BBC History Magazine Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2020 Elma Dangerfield Prize.

Emily's tongue-in-cheek Mr Darcy's Guide to Courtship was a Publishers Weekly 'Pick of the Week' and featured in Stylist Magazine's '30 Books Every Woman Should Read'

Read an Excerpt

Some believe that where the yearnings of the heart are concerned, we all have a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. This is utter nonsense. In truth, you can have no better guide than this book, and I congratulate you for advancing your cause so unreservedly by your purchase of it.
 
Couples unable to boast any portion of sense between them are permitted to increase their felicity through marriage, but it is in the national interest that they refrain from breeding.
 
 
At every public appearance, all aspects of your person – your posture, the stateliness of your brow and the sweetness of your odour – will be laid under scrutiny. On occasion, one may even be subjected to positively lurid examinations of the cut of one’s breeches, and the shapeliness of one’s calves.
 
Whatever your rank or sex, I implore you to study this book well before disgusting any noble personage with the dubious pleasure of your acquaintance.
 
Immoderate laughter, wild gesticulation or running about the place is exceedingly unbecoming in a female and may be taken as a token of a disturbed mind.
 
It is a peculiarity of the sex that most females expect – with no small degree of solemnity, I assure you – that we should be able to read their minds.
 
While it is usually a promising sign if passing ladies routinely fall into swoons, it is advisable to verify that they do so because their senses have been overwhelmed by your remarkable allure, and not the potency of your body odour.

On falling in love with an inferior female –
Console yourself with the knowledge that the average life expectancy of peasant girls is little above five and twenty, and therefore your torment will not last long.

On rejection –
It is not good form to languish around in such violent paroxysms of self-pity that you live only to be an instrument of annoyance to the rest of the world. 
 
On engagement –
Once you are engaged, a lady’s thoughts will be occupied wholly with the nuptials, of parties at which you may broadcast your attachment, and methods by which she may vex other females with her own success.

Table of Contents

Romance in the Regency Era
Making Oneself Agreeable
Selecting a Wife
Winning Her Affections
The Proposal
Ask Darcy
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