Debretts

AE:
Emily Post - older generation
Miss Manners (= Judith Martin) - current generation

Emily Post
- dated, but still quoted at times

http://www.bartleby.com/95/

also: (somewhat more current): Miss Manners (Judith Martin)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Martin

I think that the idea of etiquette or manners is very much connected to class in the UK. Many people would be embarrassed to admit they had good manners - definitely if it was something they got from a book - either because they don't want to look like snobs or because they don't want to look as if they need to *learn* good manners! Books of manners do exist, of course, though, but I can't think of a famous British one. There's a modern column in the Times, Modern Manners, but I don't think it's exactly famous: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,641-2...

Lynne Truss recently wrote a book on the subject, but again it isn't that well-known: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23110...

It's not exactly the same, but there is(was?) a nationally syndicated (US) newspaper column called "Dear Abby", that gave lots of advice about manners and rules about behavior. When I lived in the States, "Dear Abby" was widely known and often quoted in jokes and elsewhere. And it was always mentioned as "Dear Abby", as if "Dear" were her first name. I guess at least some people considered her an authority of sorts.

I have never heard of any of the other authorities mentioned here except maybe Emily Post(the name rings a bell). But then again, manners were never my strong point...

a book of manners - i thought it is for people who want to become acceptable in a different milieu to the one they were brought up in. surely people have the manners of 'their group' and so would not need such a work, short of aspiring to a group which inter alia is defined by manners which were thought worth writing about.

i can understand foreigners reading such works to familiarize themselves with a culture.

(although, if all the keen discussions of the myriad of 'fucking' topics on this forum are anything to go by, fucking manners are needed.?

Ich glaube, hier ist auch mal das eine oder andere Buch erwähnt worden:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,641,0...
Die Kolumne ist auch sonst ganz amüsant.

Nicht wirklich ein "Benimm"-Buch, aber interessant und witzig: Kate Fox, "Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour"

http://www.sirc.org/news/watching_the_english...

'Dear Abby (Abigail van Buren)' and 'Ann Landers' were the pseudonyms of two twin sisters who wrote popular nationally syndicated daily columns in (competing) US newspapers for decades. Columns under those names are, I believe, now written by other people, and IMO are no longer very good; I'd recommend instead someone like Carolyn Hax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Advice_...). But I wouldn't call them etiquette experts, just advice columnists. An old-fashioned pejorative term is 'agony aunt.'

In the UK, the etiquette rulebook most commonly referred to is Debrett's.

I know this thread is old, but I read it today and then researched the subject, since I had heard about Debrett's, but forgotten its name. Hope this is helpful.

@ #10
I tend to think that's the reason why #1 mentioned that name in his post two and a half years ago.

Eine ganze Reihe Knigge Seminare
findet man auf dieser Website http://www.etikette-und-mehr.de. Dazu gibts wöchentlich auch noch eine Sendung bei den öffentlich rechtlichen (MDR).