THE DAUGHTERS OF ENGLAND, THEIR POSITION IN SOCIETY, CHARACTER & RESPONSIBILITIES.

(WOMEN - CONDUCT LITERATURE). ELLIS, SARAH.

(London: Fisher, Son, & Co., [1842]). 200 x 120 mm. (7 7/8 x 4 3/4"). 4 p.l., 400 pp. FIRST EDITION.

Contemporary half calf over marbled paper boards, raised bands, spine compartments decorated in blind separated by gilt rules, all edges marbled. Joints and corners neatly renewed. Engraved frontispiece. Title page with ink ownership inscription of Ellen Morgan, dated June 1854. Occasional early pencil marginalia and underlining. Chase and Levenson, The Spectacle of Intimacy, Princeton University Press: 2009, p. 66. Boards a bit chafed, slight rubbing to extremities, but the restored binding quite solid and plenty pleasing enough. Faint transfer from frontispiece, otherwise an unusually fine copy internally, entirely clean, fresh, and bright.

This is an excellent copy of an important Victorian female author's guidance to young English girls. Educated primarily at home but urged to read widely by her Quaker father, Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799-1872) began writing poetry and stories at an early age. When financial adversity hit her family, she decided to use her talents to help bring in money. Her first published work was the anti-slavery story, "The Negro Slave: A Tale Addressed to the Women of Great Britain" (1831), and it was followed by a number of morally uplifting tales. In 1839, two years following her marriage to Congregationalist minister William Ellis, she began to publish a widely influential series of four conduct-books for women, of which the present volume was the second. According to DNB, these books "focused on the role of women in the middle-class family, and emphasized the moral influence a Christian woman, particularly as wife and mother, should bring to bear on the men of that family." Ellis "accepted that women were socially and legally subordinate to men, but she endorsed the concept of 'separate spheres' in order to claim considerable autonomy for women within the domestic sphere. She also believed in the inherent moral equality of the sexes." Ellis' works were very well received by, and had considerable impact on, her intended audience; in the opinion of literary scholars Karen Chase and Michael Levenson, she "must stand alongside Dickens as one of the deep designers" of the mid-Victorian conception of the family. (ST19567-216)

Price: $225.00