Author:
Title: Hints on the Nature and Management of Duns. By the Honourable ____, a Younger Son.
Description: London, T.C. Newby 1845. Octavo contemporary quarter morocco with morocco grain blue cloth sides (spine scuffed); [2],158pp, tinted litho frontispiece, illustrations by R.J. Hamerton through the text. Frontispiece browned with offsetting onto the title. ¶ A useful guide to a specific problem in economics which has wider application, it begins with the twelve miseries of younger sons with reference to duns and finishes with a handy vocabulary. In between are examples of the three stages of correspondence - civil, pressing and peremptory - and responses; lessons in excuses, methods of escape and so on. The notice this received in The Athenaeum is kind enough but is both moralistic and pessimistic: "but the evil [caused by younger sons not duns] is, we fear, too deeply seated to be laughed out of society." The author remains a mystery but the publisher fits the book like a glove: "an incorrigible rogue .... opportunistic, mercenary, crass, sly, suave" are a few terms used by Roger Lathbury describing Newby and his dealings with Emily Bronte ('The Avaricious and the Intransigent'). A companion volume 'Hints on Husband Catching' appeared the next year.

Keywords: literature fiction c19th England humour social history economics guide books