Gathered together here is the best of bad behavior: more than 700 of the most irate, emphatic, amusing condemnations of impropriety, culled from nearly 200 etiquette books, ranging from the fourteenth century to the present.

A procession of characters has been brought to rollicking life in thirty-five drawings by one of the great artistic wits of our century, Ronald Searle. Etiquette authors did not confine their advice solely to decorum. They digressed into all manner of self-improvement, making etiquette manuals the self-help books of the past and The Hatless Man as topical today as when its rules were written.

The Hatless Man is not just for lovers of propriety, but for people in all situations in which confusions of behavior may arise. It supplies nuggets of advice for almost everybody: dieters, gluttons, waiters, wallflowers, psychiatrists, dogs, spouses, athletes, musicians, lawyers, commuters, tourists, or simply for lovers of time travel who want to spend some moments luxuriating in the lost era of carriage rides and shooting parties.