“A lady,” commented Florence Hartley, in The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette , published in 1860 and frequently reissued for the next twenty years, “a lady without her piano, or her pencil, her library of French, German, or Italian authors, her fancy work and tasteful embroideries, is now rarely met with. …”

Great article about pianos in the 1800s: For a century the piano was America’s radio, phonograph, and television set, as well as its finishing school and its supreme status symbol