Select Female Biography; comprising memoirs of eminent British ladies derived from original and other authentic sources.

Scarce

Roberts, Mary. Select Female Biography. Comprising memoirs of eminent British ladies, derived from original and other authentic sources. London: Printed for John and Arthur Arch, 1821.

8vo.; black endpapers; a.e.g; black morocco; decoratively stamped in gilt; spine rubbed; edgeworn. In a specially made cloth slipcase.

First edition of Robert’s first book; OCLC locates one copy at the Glasgow University Library. A second revised edition appeared in 1829; and is much more common.

Roberts includes two dozen women’s biographies in this omnibus of “the illustrious dead…some of the brightest rays of moral and intellectual excellence” from England (p. vii); their names are listed in the Contents page in alphabetical order, though they are arranged chronologically in the text: Ann Askew, Elizabeth Carter, Lady Jane Grey, Lucy Hutchinson, Princess Charlotte of Wales, Caroline Symonds and the Countess of Warwick, among others. Roberts elaborates on her selections; they “are presented with a sincere desire to interest the mind, by a delineation of virtues sustained amidst all the diversities of human society, and to excite a serious consideration of the important connexion (sic) which subsists between the present character and the future destiny” (p. viii).

Roberts explains that she culled some of the information herein from Thomas Gibbon’s Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women (1777), as well as some “contemporary biographers” (p. ix) whose books she read to aid in her own research. Her finished product shines with “bright examples of suffering virtue, of exalted piety, of active benevolence, and of talents chastened and improved by the noblest principals” (p. ix).

The biographies range from that of the “amiable young woman” (p. 2) Ann Askew, the poet who was sent to jail charged with heresy by Henry VIII and burned at the stake in 1546, when she was twenty-five years old; to Ann Ward Kemp, “an extraordinary child, who, when only four years old, evinced a sense of religion, and maturity of talent, which have perhaps never been equaled at such a tender age” (p. 321). All of the entries reflect Robert’s endorsement of each woman’s morality and intelligence.

Roberts (1788-1864) was born a Quaker, but she left the Church in 1807 to become a follower of Joanna Southcott; during the 1830s she worked for Southcott’s Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace. Roberts grew up in the country and became an amateur natural historian; after Select Female Biography – which appears to be the topical anomaly in her oeuvre – she tapped into her knowledge of her surroundings and published three books on the subject: The Wonders of the Vegetable Kingdom Displayed (1822), The Conchologist’s Companion (1824), and her most famous book, The Annals of My Village (1831), which details English country life and habits at the beginning of the nineteenth century. She also published The Process of Creation Considered with Reference to the Present Condition of the Earth (1837), Ruins and Old Trees Associated with Remarkable Events in English History (1843), and A Popular History of the Mollusca (1851).

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Item ID#: 10404

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