The Art of Living

Robert Grant's The Art of Living is a reflective work of moral and social observation, concerned less with abstract doctrine than with the practical cultivation of a balanced, humane, and intelligent life. Written in a polished late-nineteenth-century prose style, it belongs to a tradition of genteel essays that joins ethical counsel with urbane wit. Grant considers manners, ambition, taste, domestic conduct, and social responsibility as parts of a larger aesthetic of character. Grant, an American novelist, essayist, and jurist, brought to the book the double vision of a literary observer and a public-minded professional. Educated at Harvard and active in Boston's intellectual and civic circles, he was attentive to the aspirations and anxieties of the emerging American upper middle class. His fiction and essays often examine the moral pressures created by success, refinement, and social mobility. This book will appeal to readers interested in the history of self-culture, American social thought, and the essay as a vehicle for ethical reflection. Though rooted in its period, The Art of Living remains rewarding for its measured intelligence and its insistence that a well-lived life is an achievement of judgment, discipline, and sympathy.