author
Mortimer Delano de Lannoy
1869–1920
A late-19th-century writer on dress, manners, and heraldry, his work offers a vivid glimpse of the social codes and cultivated tastes of his era. He moved easily between etiquette manuals and genealogical research, bringing a distinctly old-world sense of ceremony to both.
1 Audiobook
Simplex Munditiis, Gentlemen
by Mortimer Delano de Lannoy, Reginald Harvey Arnold
About the author
Born in 1869 and active in New York literary and genealogical circles, Mortimer Delano de Lannoy is best remembered for writing about refinement, lineage, and social custom. His best-known book, Simplex Munditiis, Gentlemen (1891), was written with Reginald Harvey Arnold and sets out rules of dress and conduct for men in the late Victorian world.
He also worked in heraldry and family history. Records connected with The Genealogy, History, and Alliances of the American House of Delano, 1621 to 1899 identify him as the editor of its heraldic and historical sections, and other catalog records credit him with The Bibliography of American Heraldry (1896). These works show the range of his interests, from everyday manners to coats of arms and ancestry.
Though not widely known today, his books remain useful to readers curious about the language of etiquette and the culture of status in the 1890s. He died in 1920, leaving behind a body of work that reflects both the formality and fascination with heritage that shaped his time.