Amy Vanderbilt

Authority on etiquette, born in Staten Island, New York, USA, the cousin of ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt. She studied journalism at New York University and worked in advertising, publicity, and journalism before Doubleday invited her to write an etiquette manual. Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette (1952, frequently revised) established her as the leading American authority on good manners, a position maintained for two decades by her popular books and television and radio programmes and her syndicated etiquette column (1954–74), which reached 40 million readers.

Amy Vanderbilt (July 22, 1908 - December 27, 1974) was a U.S. authority on etiquette. In 1952 she published the best selling book Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. The book, later retitled Amy Vanderbilt's Etiquette, has been updated and is still in circulation today.

Vanderbilt descended from either an uncle or brother of Cornelius Vanderbilt and is therefore not an official descendant-member of the Vanderbilt family. She was born in New York City and worked as a part-time reporter for the Staten Island Advance when she was 16. She worked in advertising and public relations, and published her famous book after five years of research.

On December 27, 1974, she died from multiple fractures of the skull after falling from a second-floor window in her townhouse on East 87th Street in New York. To this day, it is not clear whether her fall was accidental (most likely due to the medications she took for hypertension, which friends and relatives later said caused her to have severe dizzy spells) or whether she committed suicide.