ON THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN
FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE MARCHIONESS OF DOWNSHIRE
HAMILTON, Elizabeth.
Letters on the elementary Principles of Education.
Bath, R. Cruttwell for G. and J. Robinson, 1801 [–1802].
Two vols, 8vo, pp. I: xv, [1 (blank)], 436 (i.e. 426), [2 (advertisements, blank)]; II: [2], iv, 455, [1 (advertisements)]; small marginal loss to upper corner of vol. II title, a few small marks; overall a very good set in contemporary sheep-backed boards with marbled sides, spines gilt-ruled compartments, red morocco lettering-pieces, gilt crowned monogram to upper compartment of Mary Hill as Marchioness of Downshire (see below); volume numbering to spines inverted, cracks to joints, corners sightly worn, headcaps chipped.
Second edition, published in the same year of the first, of this epistolary exploration of how children learn, by the Scottish novelist and educationist Elizabeth Hamilton (1756 or 1758–1816).
Hamilton was a friend of Maria Edgeworth and of Sir Walter Scott, and had been educated at a day school for four or five years from the age of eight; she is best known for her Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796) and her satirical Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800). Her Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education, first published as Letters on Education earlier in the same year, is framed as a series of letters to a friend and aims to give assistance to the ‘young but conscientious parent, who, anxiously solicitous for the virtue and happiness of her offspring, is in danger of being bewildered amid the variety of systems that offer themselves as unerring guides in the important path of education’.
The work ‘owes at least as much to the philosophical theories of John Locke as it does to the era’s standard conduct-book advice on girls’ education’ (ODNB). The Letters see Hamilton ‘feminizing “masculine” discourses, aiming to intellectualize women’s culture by popularizing, novelizing, and thereby disseminating philosophy, theology, and history, and doing so in a way that offered herself as a model for the new intellectual–domestic woman’ (Kelly, Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790–1827 (1993)).
‘Neither [Maria] Edgeworth nor Hamilton challenged the primary domestic, subordinate position of women, yet within their work there are clear indications of a desire for greater recognition of women’s work, of a proper valuation of their lives, for, as Hamilton argued: “Nor can I, perhaps, plead the cause of my sex more effectively, than by explaining the influence of early education; and thus rendering it evident to every unprejudiced mind, that if women were so educated as to qualify for the proper performance of this momentous duty, it would do more towards the progressive improvement of the species, than all the discoveries of science and the researches of philosophy.”’ (Rendall, Origins of modern Feminism, p. 111)
Provenance: from the library of Mary Hill (née Sandys, 1764–1836), Marchioness of Downshire and later Baroness Sandys, a wealthy heiress, society hostess and literary patron, widow of the politician Arthur Hill. Raised by her uncle, one of Samuel Johnson’s ‘Streatham worthies’, she became a friend of both the Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert, and once entertained the Prince for four days at the family seat of Ombersley. She built up a fine collection of contemporary fiction, mostly by women, to add to the family library, and took great care over the education of her children following the premature death of her husband.
CBEL3, IV, 927.
