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[Metamorphosis book]
Elizabeth Winspear, possibly a young woman of New England, boldly painted this harlequinade or metamorphosis, the earliest form of what we now call a movable book. With verse and images, Winspear instructs the reader on each leaf of her flap book to “turn down the leaf and see.” The book culminates with life’s final transformation: “O see, O see, thou art but dust, Thy gold & silver is but rust. Thy time is gone. Thy hour is spent. No worldly care can death prevent.”Tags 1700s -
A Compendious System of Astronomy [...]
Keenly aware that she was venturing into a new sphere for women, Margaret Bryan included mathematics and science in the curriculum to be taught to girls at her schools in Blackheath, London, and Margate. Bryan wrote on physics and optics, using straightforward language and everyday examples. The subscribers for this title included celebrated mathematicians and astronomers as well as Bryan’s former pupils. This copy has two manuscript letters from Dr. William Kitchiner tipped in, related to his book on telescopes. -
Letter to Ruth Barlow
Abolitionist and feminist Helen Maria Williams was an important participant in the revolutionary discourse of the late eighteenth century, alongside Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine. In 1790, Williams joined a group of British radicals residing in Paris and hosted a salon that attracted leading revolutionaries. Like Paine, Williams provided aid for fellow republican radicals. In August 1798, she wrote to her American expatriate friend Ruth Barlow. Williams hoped that Ruth’s husband, the diplomat Joel Barlow, would assist James Wollstonecraft (Mary’s brother), who was then in prison in Paris as a suspected spy. The letter notes Paine’s ineffective efforts on James’ behalf.Tags 1700s -
A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools
English physician and natural philosopher Erasmus Darwin wrote this work at the urging of his two daughters, born from his relationship with Mary Parker and out of wedlock. They had sought his counsel on establishing a boarding school in 1794. Darwin argued that young women should be educated in schools, rather than at home, and he advocated for them to study the sciences, learn to handle money, and take vigorous exercise, among other advices. His approach, directed at middle-class women, amplified the contemporary view that men and women should have separate and complementary spheres. -
Letters containing a sketch of the politics of France: from the thirty-first of May 1793, till the twenty-eighth of July 1794, and of the scenes which have passed in the prisons of Paris
Abolitionist and feminist Helen Maria Williams was an important participant in the revolutionary discourse of the late eighteenth century, alongside Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine. In 1790, Williams joined a group of British radicals residing in Paris and hosted a salon that attracted leading revolutionaries. Her Letters gave British readers a sustained eyewitness account of the French Revolution, suggesting France as a model for England. Though sympathetic to the Revolution, she was jailed for her British citizenship during the Reign of Terror. She became a French citizen in 1817.Tags 1700s -
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
When Edmund Burke attacked the French Revolution in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Wollstonecraft joined other English radicals, including Catharine Macaulay and Thomas Paine, in writing responses calling for reform and arguing for religious and civil liberties. Her Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) was particularly successful. She followed up with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)--another bestseller and quickly translated into multiple languages. In it she asserted that women have the same fundamental rights as men and only appear to be inferior because of their inferior education. -
Original Stories from Real Life, With Conversations, Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness
Courageous British political philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the first great feminist writers. She had kept a school and worked as a governess, but failed at both. Her Original Stories, with engravings by William Blake, was published by the dissenting publisher Joseph Johnson, whose friendship and support for her work encouraged her. She did translations and served as reviewer and editorial assistant for his Analytical Review. Johnson published all of Wollstonecraft’s books. -
La Chevalière d’Eon
French aristocrat d’Eon was the first European known to publicly change gender. D’Eon had been a successful soldier and diplomat, fighting in the Seven Years War and helping to negotiate the Peace of Paris (1763). When his lavish spending and insubordination led the king to recall him to France, d’Eon claimed to be a woman and negotiated a return under the king’s protection. The king required the now Chevalière d’Eon to dress as a woman. She was permitted, however, to continue to wear the military Cross of St. Louis she had earned during the Seven Years War. The Chevalière was considered one of the most accomplished women of her time, but she never regained political influence. By 1791, the French monarchy had fallen and the Chevalière had returned to London. She continued to maintain a level of celebrity, enough to make sales of her portrait profitable.Tags 1700s -
Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade
Anna Letitia Barbauld was one of the leading writers of early Romanticism. Her poetry and essays express her political advocacy for peace, liberty, and independence of thought. She edited The Female Speaker, a book used to educate girls. A Unitarian and strong proponent of abolition, she wrote against those who supported the slave trade, as witnessed in her Epistle. Barbauld taught English, wrote primers, and with her husband ran a school for boys. Their school took in female boarding students as well. -
Letters on Education: With Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects
Catharine Macaulay was a leading political activist in England and sympathetic to the French Revolution. The first modern English woman to write a significant work of history, she highlighted the defense of liberties in the face of absolutism and was an ardent opponent of slavery. In this work, Macaulay advocates that boys and girls should be educated together—using the same curriculum—believing without an education women would not achieve political equality. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Macaulay, “You are the only female writer who I coincide in opinion with respecting the rank our sex ought to endeavor to attain in the world.” -
L'entrée de l'Empereur Sigismond a Mantouë: gravé en vingt cinq feuilles, d'après une longue frise exécutée en stuc dans le palais du T. de la même ville, sur un dessin de Jules Romain
Antoinette Bouzonette Stella was born into a family of goldsmiths and engravers. She and her sister Claudine trained with their uncle Jacques Stella, a painter and engraver, who had an atelier in the Palais de Louvre. This series of her engravings is after sculpture in the Palazzo del Te in Mantua by Gulio Romano and Primaticcio depicting the Emperor Sigismund's entry into Mantua in 1432. They were first published in 1675. These are impressions from the original plates, published sometime after 1787. -
Verses: Affixed to the Bills of Mortality for the Town of Northampton, 21 December 1787
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. The collection includes over 350 letters to and from the Ladies as well as additional manuscripts, ephemera, artifacts, and printed materials related to them and to their home (Plas Newydd). -
Poems, on Several Occasions
Working-class poets in the eighteenth century pushed back against the simplistic tradition of the English pastoral and its romantic portrayal of the life of rural laborers. Mary Collier and Ann Yearsley are notable examples. Yearsley was a milkmaid and farmer’s wife. Writer and philanthropist Hannah More learned of her poetry in 1783 and became her patron, arranging for Yearsley to publish a book by subscription. Poems led to immediate success and a break with More over the distribution of profits. Yearsley continued to publish, maintaining full editorial control over her work. -
Manuscript summons for witnesses against “Hannah a negro woman”
This court summons orders two men and two women to serve as witnesses the following day against “Hannah a Negro woman” who had been indicted for the “Murder of a Bastard Child.” The child was likely her own.Tags 1700s -
Abrégé de l'art des accouchemens
A descendant of pioneering midwife Louise Bourgeois Boursier, Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray passed the tests to be admitted as a midwife of the city and faubourgs of Paris in 1740, after a three-year apprenticeship under Anne Bairsin. In 1759, King Louis XV chose her to travel throughout France to teach midwifery in an effort to decrease infant mortality. That same year, her De virorum organiz generationi inservientibus was published, a practical textbook intended to modernize and professionalize midwifery in France. This copy is signed by Du Coudray. -
Fair copy of memoir
French aristocrat d’Eon was the first European known to publicly change gender. D’Eon had been a successful soldier and diplomat, fighting in the Seven Years War and helping to negotiate the Peace of Paris (1763). When his lavish spending and insubordination led the king to recall him to France, d’Eon claimed to be a woman and negotiated a return under the king’s protection. The king required the now Chevalière d’Eon to dress as a woman. The Chevalière was considered one of the most accomplished women of her time, but she never regained political influence. When France entered the American War of Independence in 1778, d’Eon petitioned the government to allow her once again to wear the uniform of a Dragoon captain and go to war. This manuscript is part of a dossier of materials compiled in that effort, which was unsuccessful.Tags 1700s -
Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier: fille de Gaston d'Orléans, frere de Louis XIII, roi de France
In the late eighteenth century, aristocrat Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the young orphaned daughter of Chambre Brabazon Ponsonby, abandoned their lives in Ireland and made a home for themselves in Llangollen, Wales, to the disapproval of both their families. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they appeared to have understood their relationship as a marriage. They were part of an emerging culture of relationships between same-sex couples. This book from the Ladies' library was purchased by Edward Lloyd of Rhagatt “at the sale of the effects of the Ladies of Llangollen, on the third day’s sale.” -
The Deputy Commissary's Guide within the Province of Maryland
The Deputy Commissary’s Guide was one of the last items issued by Anne Catharine Green’s press. The engraved title page is considered the finest work by Thomas Sparrow, an Annapolis engraver. Green was editor of The Maryland Gazette for eight years without interruption. Its masthead read, “Anne Catharine Green & Son,” until her death. -
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book and the first American woman to seek to earn a living from her writings. Born in West Africa, she was purchased by Susanna and John Wheatley at age seven or eight. Susanna taught her to read and write. Her Poems, rejected in racist Boston, were first published in London, financed by Selena Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. They reflect Wheatley’s breadth of learning, identity as an African, and life as an enslaved woman. This first edition belonged to Melatiah Bent, a widowed tavern keeper. Wheatley signed the verso of the title page. -
[Colonial currency]
Dutch immigrant Anne Catharine Hoof Green worked alongside her husband in his Maryland printing business. When he died in 1767, she inherited his bankruptcy debt along with the shop—a pattern repeated in the lives of many women printers. She went on to successfully petition the state assembly to continue her appointment as public printer to the Province of Maryland. Sympathetic to the Revolution, she ran a busy shop and post office, printing books, pamphlets, almanacs, and colonial currency. She paid off the debt. Green used the process of nature printing to protect against counterfeiting.
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