… but so was the development of manners, deportment and a form of self-fashioning based upon appreciation of art, literature and music. Like the opera, balls and dinner parties underpinned an elaborate marriage market that allowed the …
… be deceitful and the gaming table was also strongly associated with risk and debt. Eighteenth-century prescriptive literature abounds with stories of rich aristocrats whose excesses at the gaming table led them to ruin. 6 In these …