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According to Emily Post....

© Megan Drummond

This became one of the most commonly used phrases in the 1920’s and is still a popular phrase today, being taken as the final word on proper social conduct.

Emily Post, the queen of proper etiquette, was born Emily Price in October of 1873. She was raised in a prominent Baltimore family, the daughter of a wealthy and well-respected architect. She was educated by her governesses and by private schools in Baltimore and New York. She also spent her summers between Baltimore and New York, in Bar Harbor and Tuxedo Park, both of which her father had been commissioned to design and develop.

After spending some time abroad, Emily met Edwin Post at a ball at one of the most elegant mansions on Fifth Avenue. At the age of 20, Emily married the banker in a fashionable wedding. Following a honeymoon tour of Europe, Emily settled into married life in her first home in New York’s Washington Square.

Emily’s marriage lasted long enough to produce two sons, then ended in divorce. After her divorce, Emily concentrated her attentions on writing fiction to help her support her two sons. Her romantic stories of European and American high society were serialized in some of the day’s most popular magazines and many were successfully published in book form. Emily also became a “traveling correspondent” for such magazines as Vanity air, McCall’s and Collier’s, crossing the United States by car and touring Europe on the eve of WWI.

At the urging of her publisher, Emily drew on her experiences with and knowledge of polite society to write an etiquette book. This book, first published in 1922 and originally titled Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, was unlike any other etiquette book of the time. It was easy to read and straightforward. It also did not assume that only the wealthy would want to know how to behave properly. Emily knew that in the dynamic society of America in the 1920’s, there were many people whose commercial success required them to deal with situations that their upbringing had not properly prepared them for.

Emily’s social handbook, in later editions titled Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, immediately skyrocketed to the top of the nonfiction bestseller list and made an instant celebrity of Emily Post. It was quite an adjustment for a girl who had been taught that well-bred women did not work, but Emily maintained her celebrity status, as well as that of an outstanding career woman, for the rest of her life.