Address to the Public, particulary to the members of the Legislature of New York proposing a Plan for improving Female Education.
Middlebury (VT): (by the author) Printed by J. W. Copeland, 1819.
Second edn. 8vo, pp. 60. Bound in full straight grained red morocco, stamped in gilt, all edges gilt, later bookplate of collector Anna de Gunzberg.
Inscribed by the author to Stepanie Felicite de Crest de Saint Aubin, Comtesse De Genlis (1746-1830): "To the Countess De Genlis | most respectfully presented by the author". A remarkable association copy. A fine copy.
Living in Middlebury, VT with her doctor husband, Emma Willard opened a school for girls in her home in 1814, "...by calling her school female seminaries ... what she aspired to do was to make available to young women the classical and scientific studies that were of a collegiate order. Her success in Middlebury enlarged her vision and she now proposed to seize the greater opportunities she recognized in the neighboring state of New York ... she sought to enlist Gov. DeWitt Clinton and the New York Legislature in support of a program of state-aided schools for girls. Her campaign, although unsuccessful, produced a notable pamphlet that possessed all the best qualities of a lawyer's brief. It was a model propaganda document, passionate but controlled and it justified Emma Willard's assessment of herself as 'not a visionary enthusiast, who has speculated in solitude without practical knowledge of the subject."
"An Address to the Public ..." received the warm approval of James Monroe, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson but it did not open the coffers of the state. It was, nevertheless, an important document of its time, comparable in the history of women's education to those characteristic papers of the period with which John Quincy Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Clay were defining other areas of American experience and aspiration... The decision of the Troy (NY) Common Council to raise by taxation $4000 for a female academy encouraged her to move there and open her Troy Female Seminary in September, 1821”[NAW].
Comtesse De Genlis Madame de Genlis (1746-1830) was born of a noble but impoverished Burgundian family. At the age of six she was received as a canoness into the noble chapter of Alix near Lyons, with the title of Madame la Comtesse de Lancy, taken from the town of Bourbon-Lancy. She was educated entirely at home. After she grew up, she married Charles Brillart de Genlis, Marquis de Sillery, and she became determined to remedy her incomplete education and to satisfy her thirst for knowledge.
She mentions Willard and her book in her memoir: "Le Dernier Voyages de Nelgis (1828) as she notes: "Une dame angloise, madame Emma Willard, a fait, il y a quelques annees, un tres-petit livre sur l'education des femmes: j'ignore s'il a ete en traduit en francois, mais je l'ai lu et l'on y trouve de foirt bonnes choses, L'auteur voudroit qu'on etablit des colleges pour les femmes, tenus par des femmes, et dans lesquelles on apprit tout qu'on en seigne aux hommes." and Willard in her "Journal and Letters from France and Gt. Britain. "mentions a friend of hers in Paris ( Madame Belloc) who shows her letters from DeGenlis who is interested in opening up a school for girls in France." In Alma Lutz's book, "Emma Willard (1929) she mentions that Willard gave Madame Belloc a copy of the "Address to the Public ...) and the two became fast friends. Lutz notes: "Through the influence of Madame Belloc, General Lafayette and Mr. (James Fennimore) Cooper, Mrs. Willard was able to visit many of the best schools in France ... "French schools, she felt, kept their pupils in a state of Perpetual infancy and ... she found that she had many suggestions for them ..."[p. 157].
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