The contributors to this volume -- including Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Janet Egleson Dunleavy, James R. Kincaid and Joseph Wiesenfarth -- focus on how men and [particularly] women respond to the ideological pressure of manners for their gender and class as they attempt to define themselves in the novel of manners. Focusing on literary, feminist, and general political concerns, the essays explore the relationships between society's and literature's conventions in works by Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Barbara Pym, among others. Bege K. Bowers is Associate Provost at Youngstown State University. Barbara Brothers is Professor Emeritus, Youngstown State University.