Like all social groups, “the nobility” contains not only multitudes, but paradoxes. Its earliest definitions emphasize origin and descent, the inimitable heritage of bloodlines and titles born out of personal valor. Yet as a practical matter, nobility ends up being something that has to be taught, learned, and reestablished in each generation. This edited volume illustrates that even at the height of the Ancien Regime in Europe, the question of how to teach people to be noble—that is, how to instruct them to be what in theory they already are—was the subject of furious discussions. The collection provides a welcome vantage point from which to consider a classical socio-historical question: was the Russian dvorianstvo—an aggregation formed in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not least under the profound effects of the Petrine revolution—a similar social formation to the nobilities of Russia's early modern contemporaries across Europe?

As a sociological, legal, and ideological matter, this question has received many answers over the centuries. In their introduction to the volume, the editors provide a precise and informative review of this literature. The collection itself, however, innovates within this long tradition by placing education at the center of discussion. This invites us to compare the process of becoming noble in several locations, and to consider how that might inform our comparative understanding of early modern nobilities and whether it is possible to talk about them as a whole. The volume is divided into four parts: educational strategies, models and controversies, institutions, and case studies of sources. Seven of the sixteen essays focus on the Russian Empire, while the rest focus on examples from a variety of European states.

One important theme that crosses these contributions is the tension within educational ideals about nobility. In the volume's first essay, Annie Bruter argues that it is possible to identify different educational practices, characteristic of the famous division in France between nobility of the sword and nobility of the robe. Implicitly these practices reflect an ongoing social controversy. Who is the true modern noble: the heir to good breeding who is taught to fight and embody virtue, or the product of a more complex education, who displays sophistication and masters the modern arts and sciences? As Dmitrii Redin's final essay shows, this tension plays out in the famous early nineteenth century satire Tarantas, in which two Russian nobles sharing a carriage embody these polemics by providing caricatures of each type. “Vasilii Ivanovich,” “innocent of all education and fantasy” (449), is the solid but somewhat savage nobleman, while his opposite “Ivan Vasilievich” is all education and fantasy, and as a result is often caught up in the most absurd illusions. As a project built around rivalrous ideals of a perfect nature or nurture, creating a nobility finds many possible strategies, but no final ideal.

No doubt this was and is part of the nobility's adaptability across eras of profound change. In the section “Educational Strategies: What Education and for What Sort of Nobility,” Liudmila Posokhova, Viktor Karady, and Vittoria Fiorelli provide finely drawn portraits of the evolving nobilities of seventeenth century Ukraine, eighteenth-early nineteenth century Hungary, and nineteenth century Naples. In all three cases, the strategic goal to be resolved through education is how to preserve noble status and identity while preparing to occupy new social roles (as Cossacks within the Russian Empire's ranks, as partners in the political transformation of the Habsburg Empire, and as educational and philanthropic leaders in a nationalizing Italy).

Most of the volume centers on the institutional and practical contexts surrounding such efforts. As Vladislav Rzheutskii observes in his essay, the main focus of previous studies of noble education in Russia has been on ideals cultivated by the court and promoted through imperial educational institutions, such as the Cadet Corps (for men) and Smolnyi Institute (for women). Building from his extensive original research, Igor Fedyukin's essay on the Cadet Corps shows that there is still much to be learned about the specific techniques—developed as the Corps itself developed—that were used there to inculcate common modes of noble behavior that could unite a diverse social group. Success, however, was not a top-down affair, he concludes: the idea of “true nobility” took off in early seventeenth century Russia not least because there was demand for it from a broad audience of middling imperial elites. Caterina Sidoni and Olga Khavanova provide similar socially-grounded portraits of educational institutions aimed at nobles in Catania and Vienna. In the case of the college for nobles created in Catania, Sidoni observes, the ideal of nobility could survive—and indeed even be re-gilded—even as new social classes poured into these institutions. Plain old uniforms worn by traditional elites gave way to beautiful outfits adorned with eagles as rising middle class students entered the school and put on the guises.

A final group of essays explores the development of educational ideals in realms outside of official institutions: in journalism, in practices like the Grand Tour (and travel in general), and not least within intimate relationships. Victoria Frede's essay explores “How the Idea that a Tutor Can be a Friend Entered Russia,” and with it larger processes of the “assimilation of sentimental conceptions and practices and their adaptation in the life of elite nobles” (185). Though this short review can only gesture at the riches of this volume's individual contributions, its greatest success lies in its well-rounded portrait of the subject. This volume shows that noble ideals were the work of many hands and the project of their cultivation the work of many political, social, and cultural forces.