Letters to His Son

About this book

For more than thirty years, the Earl of Chesterfield, one of the most polished statesmen and wits of eighteenth-century England, wrote letters to his illegitimate son Philip to make him a perfect gentleman and diplomat. He gives advice on history, languages and reading, but above all on manners: how to please, how to listen, how to dress, how to control one's temper and conceal one's feelings, how to avoid loud laughter and how to speak well in company, insisting that knowledge without grace is of little use in the world.

Context and significance

The letters were published in 1774, after both father and son had died, by the son's widow, and they became a famous manual of worldly wisdom. Samuel Johnson, who had his own quarrel with Chesterfield, said that they taught 'the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master'. Johnson's remark is preserved in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

About the author