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Author: West, Jane
Title: Letters to a Young Lady, in Which the Duties and Character of Women are Considered, Chiefly With Reference to Prevailing Opinions
Place Published: London
Publisher:Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown
Date Published: 1811
Description:

3 volumes. (12mo) 19th century dark blue half calf, marbled paper boards, gilt decorations and lettering. Fourth edition.

A sequel to the popular Letters to a Young Man on His First Entrance in Life (1801), by the poet, novelist and playwright Jane West (1758-1852), a series of epistolary essays espousing a rather conservative though occasionally humorous view of conduct, romance and marriage:

"Extreme delicacy of health seems one motive for declining to enter the conjugal state; for, though passionate Love may promise that his purple torch shall *ever* burn beside the couch of the lovely sufferer, Hymen generally tells a very different story, and, carrying his flambeau to an evening party, vacates his seat in the sick lady's chamber in favour of her nurse and apothecary." ODND: "In many respects Letters to a Young Lady forms an ideological counterpart to Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Where Wollstonecraft advocates 'Rights', West insists on 'Duties'. However both, as feminist critics have pointed out, were involved in the debate on the 'Woman's question' and foregrounded the necessity of improved education for women, although not for the same ends."

Bookplates, foxing, very good or better.