The Art of Entertaining

The work offers a practical and cultural handbook for hosting, combining etiquette, menu planning, and entertainments with observations on national taste. It surveys meal occasions from breakfast and luncheon to formal dinners, teas, and seasonal festivities, and provides chapters on soups, fish, salads, desserts, bonbons, famous menus and receipts, and wine, alongside advice on cooks, servants, country-house hospitality, picnics, private theatricals, games, and children's parties. Throughout it balances guidance on economy and elegance, compares American habits with foreign models, and emphasizes the social and intellectual elements that make hospitality successful.