LETTERS ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND ADDRESSED TO A LADY by Mrs. Hester Chapone, A FATHER'S LEGACY TO HIS DAUGHTER'S by Dr. John Gregory, and A MOTHER'S ADVICE TO HER ABSENT DAUGHTERS, WITH AND ADDITIONAL LETTER ON THE MANAGEMENT AND EDUCATION OF INFANT CHILDREN by Lady Sarah Pennington
Book Details + Condition: Samuel Marks (New York, NY), 1827. A small full-calf hardcover, measuring 5.25" x 3". 288 pages. Grouping of three volumes in one, by popular 19th-century writers of women's conduct books, including Bluestockings member Hester Chapone, Sarah, Lady Pennington, and John Gregory. In the first work, Chapone offers advice to her 15-year-old niece, encouraging the girl's education across the fields of scripture, economy, geography, literature, and history. For Chapone, the rise to womanhood is an emergence into independent selfhood. Her Letters became a sensation in its own time and was an important, forward-thinking treatise on the education of young women. In the second work, Dr. Gregory wrote A Father's Legacy to his Daughters after the death of his wife in 1761 to honor her memory and record her thoughts on female education. The last volume is born from the scandalous breakup of Lady Pennington and her husband, with his forbidding her to see her own children. That event led to the publication of this work in 1760, part manual of advice and etiquette, part justification and defense of her marital actions. Firm binding; rubbed corners and edges; wear to original calfskin covers; binding tape to spine; an inked note from 1828, from a brother to his sister - the ink does bleed through a bit to the frontispiece. Small inked names to half-title and title page. Foxing present, mainly to first and last few pages.
