HISTORICAL BEAUTIES FOR YOUND LADIES BY MARY PILKINGTON 1811 FINE BINDING

[PILKINGTON, Mary Hopkins]. A Mirror for the Female Sex: Historical Beauties for Young Ladies; Intended to Lead the Female Mind to the Love and Practice of Moral Goodness. Designed Principally for the use of Ladies' Schools. London: Printed by W. Bell and Co. at the Union Office, St. John's Square, for J. Harris et al., 1811.

Third edition. Leather-bound. Hardback. Octavo (180 x 100 x 20 mm). Pp. xxiv, 240. English text. Beautifully bound in contemporary tree-calf, smooth spine gilt ruled and tooled, black morocco lettering-piece. Frontispiece plus numerous woodcuts as chapter head- and tail-pieces sometimes attributed to Thomas Bewick. Condition: GOOD. Collated complete. Binding tight and secure with some rubbing joints. Interior lightly toned with some staining affecting the frontispiece and title-page. Without previous ownership markings. An attractive and neat copy of this rare conduct book, which provides an early argument for educating girls from infancy into adulthood.

Notes: A Mirror for the Female Sex is an educational work for young women that advocates for the importance of thorough education, sisterly love, friendship, and more. The 'historical beauties' noted in the present work include many learned women like the translator and scholar Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More; and the Dutch painter, women's educational writer, and poet Anna Maria van Shurman. Mary Pilkington was a poet, author, and educational writer. After three of her moralistic works were published by Elizabeth Newbery in 1797, she pivoted to writing educational works for women's schools and published the present work, Biography for Girls (1798), and Mentorial Tales (1802). In the Oxford DNB, S.J. Skedd writes that Pilkington 'echoed both Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft in arguing that girls should be given an intellectual education and in asserting that the female mind is certainly as capable of acquiring knowledge as that of the other sex,' (A Mirror for the Female Sex, p. 61).

A Mirror for the Female Sex emphasized the importance of education and socialization in the lives of girls and young women. Dedicating the book "To Superiors of Female Seminaries," she asserts that "The Historical Beauties has a natural claim on some share of your patronage: It aims at the same objects with you, cooperates with all your labours in improving and polishing our sex...It makes an humble tender of assistance, in disclosing for the benefit of your charming pupils, the purest sources of whatever is best calculated for informing their understandings and bettering their hearts." Indeed, Pilkington created a work that aimed to entertain and educate, encouraging its female readers to appreciate and enjoy their studies from childhood and into adulthood. More important than anything, in Pilkington's view, was a broad understanding of human behavior that extended beyond a young woman's domestic space. "A thorough knowledge of history is certainly one of the most essential parts of a girl's education, and I confess myself very anxious to inspire you with a relish for the study of it...a young woman totally unacquainted with history must of course have her ideas bounded to the spot where she resides, and be incapable of deriving any advantage from a knowledge of the manners and customs of people who inhabit different parts of the globe." A rare and exceptionally pleasing copy of this guide book on female education, which emphasized both historical knowledge and the enjoyment of learning.