Howe's complete ball-room hand book, containing upwards of three hundred dances, including all the latest and most fashionable dances ... with elegant illustrations, and full explanation and every variety of the latest and most approved figures, and calls for the different changes, and rules on deportment and the toilet, and the etiquette of dancing.
Howe, Elias, 1820-1895.
text
[Boston, Ditson & Co.,
c1858]
eng
To demonstrate the authority of this manual, the publisher claims the author to be American inventor, Elias Howe. Similar to many other dance manuals published throughout the nineteenth century, this book is a publisher's compilation of other sources. The book begins with a description of ballroom etiquette, dress, appropriate music, and rules for prompters. The manual continues with discussion of the era's most popular dances including quadrilles, waltz, polka, schottisch, gorlitza, polka mazurka, country dances, and figures for forty-two "French Fancy Cotillons" (also known as the cotillon or German), a group dance performed as a series of party games, usually to waltz music.
Ballroom dancing--Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Dance Instruction and Technical Manuals.
Available also through the Library of Congress Web site as facsimile page images and full text.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/musdi.243