Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)

In cities from Boston to Charleston, elite men and women of eighteenth-century British America came together in private venues to script a polite culture. By examining their various 'texts'--conversations, letters, newspapers, and privately circulated manuscripts--David Shields reconstructs the discourse of civility that flourished in and further shaped elite society in British America.