Chapone, [Hester], [John] Gregory, and [Sarah] Pennington.

Letters on the Improvement of the Mind: Addressed to a Lady...A Father’s Legacy to His Daughter...[and] A Mother’s Advice to Her Absent Daughters, with an Additional Letter, on the Management and Education of Infant Children...

London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1821. Second edition of this compiled work and the first from this publisher. First published by Walker and Edwards in 1816. All editions are uncommon. OCLC records only seven copies of the 1816 edition and five copies of this edition in North America. With an engraved title and frontispiece. Minor occasional foxing and toning. A very good, tight copy of this uncommon imprint. Modern marbled paper boards with paper spine label. Twelvemo. xiii, 240 pp. Item #17426

An Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to Her Absent Daughters by Lady Sarah Pennington (1720 – 1783) was first published in 1761, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773) by Hester Chapone (1727 – 1801) in 1773, and A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters by Dr. John Gregory (1724 – 1773) was published posthumously by Gregory’s son in 1774.

All three of the titles compiled here are crucial examples of didactic writing for young women. In Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (1987), Nancy Armstrong called the period between 1760 and 1820 “the age of courtesy books for women,” during which the books were so popular that “everyone knew the ideal of womanhood they proposed,” (p. 61).

Price: $200.00