Of the Importance of Religious Opinions.
First American edition
[Wollstonecraft, Mary] Necker, Jacques. Of the Importance of Religious Opinions. Translated from the French of Mr. Necker. Philadelphia: From the Press of Carey, Stewart and Co., 1791.
8vo.; several leaves with short tears not affecting text; contemporary calf; rubbed; spine stamped in gilt and red; small ink stain at lower fore-edge.
First American edition; with 12-page publisher’s catalogue bound-in at the rear. Scarce: OCLC locates only one copy, at the University of Michigan. Also scarce in trade, with no copy recorded at auction in the past 35 years (ABPC, 1975-2009). Ownership stamp of Anne Hack (née Walters) Bayly on the title page. Bayly (1779-1857) was born in Somerset County, Maryland and married lawyer and Federalist Josiah Bayly, who was Maryland’s tenth attorney general.
Mary Wollstonecraft began translating books in the 1780s as a means of generating additional income when she started working as a writer full-time. Leading “radical” English publisher Joseph Johnson commissioned her to translate a number of pieces and she “eagerly took on” Necker’s book in 1788, writing to her sister Everina that Necker’s book “pleases me” and requesting that Everina, who was living in Paris at the time, send her “all the news you can get” about Necker’s character and reputation (Jacobs, Diane. Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft." New York: Citadel, 2003. 70).
Wollstonecraft admits that she took “liberties” in translating this work, a fact corroborated by a later, anonymous translator of a 1789 Edinburgh edition who claimed that although Wollstonecraft’s translation was fuzzy or incorrect at some points, it is generally a sufficient translation of Necker’s work. Wollstonecraft apparently did not care for Necker’s writing style, but she supported the message he communicated; Sylvana Tomaseli, the editor of A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Cambridge, 1995 edition), explained that,
In a lengthy review, deemed to be by Wollstonecraft herself, she justified the liberties taken by the translator on account of the author’s uneven style and ingenuity, but added that “few [of his fellow-creatures] can peruse this production without feeling the necessity of practicing the virtues he so earnestly recommends, without perceiving the simple, yet sublime harmony of that system which unites man t each other, and that Being who is the source of all perfection.”
This review was first published in the Analytical Review (January, 1789, and later collected in Works, Vol VII, p.66).
Necker was the general director of finances under Louis XVI, and supported loaning money to American colonies during the Revolutionary War. By 1781, however, he had had a falling out with Marie Antoinette, and she dismissed him. Necker’s thesis in Religious Opinions was that strong religious beliefs could serve as a kind of antidote to the abuses of power practiced by absolute monarchs, like Louis XVI. Necker also believed that religion counteracted the destabilizing tendency of a regime based solely on abstract notions of personal and property rights that pit the rich versus the poor.
(#12881)
Print Inquire
