The Perils of Politeness

Statesman, wit, writer and arbiter of taste, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield was one of the most influential – and divisive – figures of Georgian Britain. As Lord Macaulay later observed, Chesterfield was ‘what no person in our time has been or can be, a great political leader and at the same time the acknowledged chief of the fashionable world’. This is the first full-scale biography of Chesterfield in nearly a century, drawing on previously unpublished material to reassess his political career, literary output and enduring fascination. Richard Wendorf offers a nuanced reading of Chesterfield’s celebrated letters to his son and examines his embodiment of the virtues and perils of politeness, revealing a figure whose views on sex, marriage, women and hypocrisy continue to provoke lively debate.