Abstract
In 1854 Eliza Leslie—an author well known for her recipes, adolescent literature, and short fiction—slipped in advice to fellow women on how to write and publish under the cover of an etiquette manual. Between pages devoted to table settings, church decorum, and shopping, Leslie upheld women's right to write during a time of significant cultural ambivalence about female authorship. Leslie used the genre of an etiquette book to perform a complicated rhetorical act that simultaneously normalized, validated, and informed mid-nineteenth-century women writers at a time in which women's desire to write faced significant challenges.