History of the Condition of Women, The, In Various Ages and Nations. 2 Vols. In one.
Child, Mrs. D[avid] L. [Lydia Maria]. The History Of The Condition Of Women, In Various Ages And Nations (2 vols. in one). Boston: Otis, Broaders & Co., 1838.
Thick 16mo (4-3/8 x 7”); 298 pp. (Vol. I); vi, 298 pp. (Vol. II); illustrated; foxing throughout (most heavily at the early leaves); ownership signature of Samuel A. Shattuck at the front blank and preliminary leaf following; light brown cloth with fleur-de-lis design; printed label at spine, lacking with small, worn fragments only present; heel of spine worn with 1/8 lacking; essentially a sound copy with the binding firm. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
Second edition. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) undertook the editing of the “Ladies Family Library” in 1832 to which she contributed her own Good Wives (1833) and The History Of The Condition Of Women, In Various Ages And Nations (1835). The publisher failed after the publication of Volume 5, but this 1838 reprint reflects the book’s popularity with contemporary audiences. In fact, the title was printed at least six times during the early half of the 19th-century. Margaret Fuller reviewed the 1845 edition for the New York Tribune and remarked: “As long as there are copies of this popular book to be procured...readers will hasten to seek for it.”
Volume I surveys the women of Africa and Asia and Volume II those of Europe, America and the South Seas. In commenting on Child’s History, scholar Nina Baym notes that the writer’s approach is less a history of deeds and events than of “cultural ideals.” While Child sees female chastity and monogamous unions as pivotal to civilization, she foresees that “[t]ime will come, when it will be seen that the moral and intellectual condition of woman must be, and ought to be, in exact correspondence with that of man, not only in its general aspect but in its individual manifestation.” Karcher, in her extended treatment of the life and work of Lydia Maria Child, emphasizes that while Child’s text is not always explicitly feminist, her “theories and arguments in favor of women’s rights are unmistakably 'implied' in the book’s 'manner of stating historical facts.” The diversity of labor and roles women have performed suggest there is no single form of 'true womanhood'. The use of women as beasts of burden in many cultures refutes the argument that women’s physical weakness reflects their inferiority to men; and the many societies which give women either an equal or superior status to men indicate there is nothing inevitable about women’s status as subordinate to men. Karcher also points out that both Grimke in her Letters On The Equality Of The Sexes (1838) and Margaret Fuller in Woman In The Nineteenth Century (1845) frequently cite Child’s text as an authority. A landmark text on women by this Abolitionist pioneer, and scarce, early editions such as this are particularly elusive.
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