St. Johnston claims that his book fills a gap in the documentation of dance history and confesses he knows of only three books on the subject, those by Gaston Vuillier, Edward Scott, and John Weaver. The work contains much of the same information found in numerous other historiographies of the era. The author considers the birth of stage dancing to be Kate Vaughan's "Skirt Dance." Another opinion expressed by St. Johnston is the erroneous notion that the quadrille was one of the dances that directly followed the minuet. As was common during this era, the author maintains a strict western bias with chapter titles such as "Quaint Dances in Civilized Countries."