Récréations Morales et Amusantes, à l'usage des jeunnes Demoiselles qui entrent dans le monde.
Paris: à la Librarie d'Education, 1817. Second edition, revised, corrected, and updated with six new recreations and six new illustrations. The first edition, published in 1810, is also scarce. Engraved frontispiece; five engraved plates. Binding extremities lightly rubbed with a few small chips to boards and a minor crack to crown of spine. Light foxing to text and plates. The occasional small chip or stain. Slight creasing to pp. 105-110, touching text, but not affecting legibility. A very good, tight copy of a scarce book. Contemporary calf with a gilt-tooled spine and gilt-lettered red morocco spine label. Edges sprinkled red. Octavo. 353 pp. Item #16313
Félicité de Choiseul-Meuse (ca. 1770-1824) is best know as the author of Julie, ou j'ai sajuve ma Rose (1807), which has been called the first erotic novel to have been written by a woman. She wrote many other erotic works, and three of them were censored during the French Revolution. The present work is a collection of moral stories for girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen, which the author felt was a crucial time in their development. The purpose of such a work is to teach her audience to understand their adolescent passions and to keep them under control.
Price: $650.00