Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, 

in Boarding Schools, Private Families, and Public Seminaries

by Erasmus Darwin 

First American edition.  Philadelphia:  John Ormrod, 1798  

Hardback is overall in VERY GOOD- condition.

• Contemporary leatherbound covers have spine label and gilt title. 
• Boards show some smudges, aging, chips, scuffing, cracking at shoulders, edgewear.  Corners are worn, frayed, with exposed board.  See photos.
• Spine has gilt text on red label, a little dimmed, and is worn with chipped ends and an old repair to the head.  See photos.
• Binding is secure, with first gathering loose.  See photos.  
• Pastedowns and feps have some moderate foxing, staining, writing.  Rear fep is torn away.  See photos.  
• Frontispiece is present.  
• Owner name on title page.
• Interior is gently age-toned, exhibits marginal toning, scattered foxing, some smudges, light edgewear; wear to margins of end pages.  See photos.
• Inside pages are free of writing and intentional marks.
• Text block edges have some edgewear, some foxing.  See photos. 
• PS2025.0122

308 pages. 4 x 6.5 inches

First American edition of this educational classic that shows the influence of Rousseau on the work of Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802).  Included in this edition is Mrs. M. Peddle’s Rudiments of Taste, a popular conduct book (London 1789, U.S. 1790), with its own title page.   Contemporary leather with red spine label and gilt ruling on the spine.  Chipping to spine ends and signs of an old repair to the spine head, with resulting loosened first gathering.  Interior is overall very good, gently toned with some smudges, nicely printed and laid out.  Handsome shaded capital letters at the start of each chapter.

Darwin wrote the present work after helping his daughters, Susan and Mary Parker, establish a boarding school for young women in 1794.  He draws on the theories of Rousseau, Locke, and Genlis to advocate for the education of women in schools in topics like philosophy, the natural sciences, history, art, manufacturing, and language.  Darwin believed that women should be educated for the purpose of becoming better wives and companions to men, but promoted progressive notions that women’s education would take place in well-resourced schools (rather than in the home) and that women should be educated in the concepts of finance, industry, and manufacturing. 

In Mrs. Peddle’s The Rudiments of Taste, “Classical influence blends with Christian…  [The author] recommends reading ancient and modern history, travels, biography, science and good poetry, not novels, which leave their readers incapable of ‘relishing anything superior,’” (Blain, Grundy, and Clements, eds., The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, p. 841).

Please see photos. More photos available upon request.

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