Resources

Articles - Popular Newspaper and Magazine

  • "Rejoice, Muffy and Biff: A Preppy Primer Revisited." Motoko Rich. NYT online. 4 Apr. 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/books/04preppy.html
  • http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html
  • http://es.homesandproperty.co.uk/newenglandstylehomesinsurrey.html
  • http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/08/18/whats_pink_and_green_and_worn_all_over/
  • http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/07/16/let_me_school_you_about_preppies/
Articles - Scholarly

Blogs
(celebratory)
  • Summer is a Verb. http://summerisaverb.blogspot.com/- mentioned in 04/04 NYT article
  • An Etiquette Grrl Strikes Back. http://etiquettegrrls.blogspot.com/ - run by the author of two prep-heavy etiquette books, Things You Need to be Told and its sequel (see below)
Subcategory Southern Prepsterdom
Books - Fiction
  • Prep: A Novel. Curtis Sittenfeld. New York: Random, 2005.
  • Mating Rituals of the North American WASP. Lauren Lipton. 5 Spot, 2009.
Books - Non-fictionTexts on the subject generally fall either into the category of sociology (understanding the phenomenon) or etiquette (which I'll call conforming to the phenomenon for the meantime - though it's a bit more subversive and extensive than that). Over the next weeks, I'm going to read and assess these books on the basis of their contribution to the understanding of prepsterdom (and I'll have a few things to say about their literary and scholarly merits, no doubt).

The basics
  • TPH - starts at around $50 on amazon.com/£50 on amazon.co.uk (this means that immediate purchase it isn't on my priority list)
  • True Prep. Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd. New York: Knopf, 2010. - the sequel, to be released Sept. 7, 2010
Sociology
(I got these books from the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section on TPH's Amazon site.)
Etiquette/Instructional
  • Things You Need to be Told. Leslie Carlin and Honore McDonough Ervin. Penguin, 2001.
  • Tipsy in Madras: A complete guide to 80s preppy drinking. Matt Walker and Marissa Walsh.
Websites
  • Preppy Must Haves. http://preppymusthave.com/
Other Web Resources
  • Wikipedia
  • Urban Dictionary
  • Yahoo Answers (etc.)
  • WikiHow