GOUGE, William.

by William Gouge

£4,950 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of this popular and influential conduct book. William Gouge s Of Domesticall Duties is one of the most sophisticated post-Reformation conduct books written in English and the first substantial Puritan analysis of household duties. The book is a weighty tome both in topic and physical size. The first edition of 1622 ran to 693 pages and this was supplemented by 23 pages of family prayers by the third edition of 1634. This is a large book to digest, to be sure. Yet William Gouge (1575 1653), a famous Puritan preacher in London, intended his work not as a philosophical text on which high-minded readers would ruminate at their leisure. Rather, Gouge designed the book as a daily guide to family life. Books such as this on the family engaged with some of the most pressing public and political matters of the time. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were characterized by demographic and economic change which had further divided the rich and poor in England. This generated social disorder, or fear of that disorder, and long-held views that the family was central to social and political order meant that attention became focused acutely on the family and the maintenance of its government. Harvey, Karen. Love and Order: William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties. The work is divided into eight treatises, starting with the examination of Bible passages that give authority to his ideas of domestic duty, followed by a consideration of marriage and the mutual dut

• Binding: Hardcover

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