SOURCE: Thomas, George. “Bungling on Side in America.” Quadrant 47, no. 1 (January-February 2003): 117-19.

In the following review, Thomas compares the American version of snobbery presented in Snobbery with the British and Australian versions.

Snobbery in Britain, particularly in southern England, is well documented. There are books about it (of which Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige is probably the classic), it is the driving force of most of the television situation comedy from Steptoe and Son through Fawlty Towers to Keeping Up Appearances, and magazines like the Spectator continue to both observe and exemplify it. It is less documented, or even acknowledged, elsewhere in the English-speaking world, although as Barry Humphries has spent a lifetime gleefully demonstrating to us, and Joseph Epstein has now set down for his fellow Americans to see, it may be just as common and important.

Together with its conjoined twin, fashion, snobbery affects in some way...