Conduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep (ca. 2350 BC) are among the earliest surviving works. Conduct books remained popular through the 18th century, although they gradually declined with the advent of the novel.
Famous quotes containing the words conduct and/or book:
“... the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness [sic] of our own jokes.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
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