AIMS AND AIDS FOR GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN, ON THE VARIOUS DUTIES OF LIFE, including Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Development; Self-Culture, Improvement, Dress, Beauty, Fashion, Employment, Education, the Home Relations, Their Duties to Young Men, Marriage, Womanhood and Happiness.
New York: Fowler and Wells, Publishers, 1857. Second Edition. Hardcover. "My interest in woman and our common humanity is my only apology for writing this book. I see multitudes of young women about me, whose general training is so deficient in all that pertains to the best ideas of life, and whose aims and efforts are so unworthy of their powers of mind and heart, that I can not make peace with my own conscience without doing something to elevate their aims and quicken their aspirations for the good and pure in thought and life. Our female schools are but poor apologies for the purposes of mind-culture and soul development. The idea of life they inspire is but a skeleton of custom-service and fashion-worship. It is altogether subservient to what is, not what should be. Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dolls and drudges" (from the author's preface). Small octavo: 224, [4, ads] pp. In the publisher's royal blue morocco-grain cloth binding, with blind-stamped ruled borders and repetitive knotwork design, and gilt-stamped rules and titling. Scattered light foxing to the contents, with a short tear to the fore-edge of p.217-8. The spine is a bit toned, with some minor shelfwear; otherwise very good. Provenance: from the Publishers' Bookbindings collection of Ellen K. Morris and Edward S. Levin. Very good. Item #78973
Price: $150.00