For many years a leading authority on socially correct etiquette from birth to burial, Emily Price Post (1873-1960) provided solutions to social problems. With a name synonymous with proper manners, she was a successful author, daily newspaper columnist, and radio commentator.

Born into a wealthy, socialite Eastern family, the date of birth variously reported as October 3, 27, or 30, 1873, Emily Price was the only child of Bruce Price, a distinguished Baltimore architect, and Josephine Lee Price. She was educated at home and attended Miss Graham's finishing school in New York where her family had moved. She grew up in an era of footmen, servants, chaperones, and cotillions. A popular debutante, she married society banker Edwin Main Post in 1892 and had two sons, Edwin M. Jr. (1893) and Bruce Price (1895).

The Posts drifted apart, and although society frowned on divorce at that time her husband's infidelity caused the marriage to end in...