Addresses to Young Children.
Written by Socialite and Philanthropist Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild
[Education]. [Rothschild, Baroness Charlotte de]. Addresses to Young Children. Originally delivered in the Girls’ Free School, Bell Lane. London: J. Wertheimer & Co., 1864.
8vo.; brown cloth, stamped in gilt on the spine; heavily foxed; rear endpaper torn; cracked at the hinge; edges of spine lightly frayed.
Third edition of a collection of sermons and writings on ethics. Originally published in 1859, the 31 chapters cover the significance of religious holidays including Passover, Pentecost, and the Day of Atonement, as well as ethical/moral topics like pride and forgiveness. Rothschild begins most essays with the warm salutation “My dear children” and explains in the preface that her goal in publishing this volume is to “fill young minds with bright pictures of goodness and happiness…[rather] than to appall the imagination of children by shadowing forth, for their instruction and warning, those gloomy realities of degradation still unknown to them and from which, under God’s blessing, and by faithful adherence to the precepts of this sacred volume, they may always be mercifully kept aloof” (iv-v).
Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild (1819-1884), of the Rothschild banking family in Naples, France, married her cousin, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, in 1836. The “never to be forgotten Baroness” was a prominent socialite and also extremely active in politics and philanthropy. She founded several charities including the Invalid’s Kitchen at Bishopsgate and the Home for Aged Incurables. Her social circle included many high profile figures, from Benjamin Disraeli to the editor of The Times, John Delane. She was best known, however, for her work at the Jews’ Free School, and the establishment of the “Evelina Prizes” (named after her daughter who died in childbirth in 1866) in Jewish elementary schools in London. In addition to Addresses to Young Children, Baroness de Rothschild also wrote Prayers and Meditations (1869).
OCLC locates one other copy; RLG, two copies. Copies of the earlier editions (1859 and 1861) are likewise scarce.
(#8537)
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