To demonstrate the authority of this manual, the publisher claims the author to be American inventor, Elias Howe. Similar to many other dance manuals published throughout the nineteenth century, this book is a publisher's compilation of other sources. The book begins with a description of ballroom etiquette, dress, appropriate music, and rules for prompters. The manual continues with discussion of the era's most popular dances including quadrilles, waltz, polka, schottisch, gorlitza, polka mazurka, country dances, and figures for forty-two "French Fancy Cotillons," (also known as the cotillon or German), a group dance performed as a series of party games, usually to waltz music.