MILLET-ROBINET, Cora.

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Conseils aux jeunes femmes sur leur condition et leurs devoirs de mere pendant l'allaitement. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author to the silkworm tycoon Matthieu Bonafous on the front wrapper. The Conseils deploy Millet's personal experience of 19th-century science to develop a vision of professional, efficient motherhood, balancing maternal duties with an ongoing career. Cora Millet-Robinet (1798-1890) first made her name as a scientific investigator of silkworm husbandry, co-authoring a number of papers with her own husband, who ran an experimental silkworm station in Poitiers. At the age of 90, she would become the first woman to receive the Chevalier de l'Ordre du Mérite Agricole for her work. The Conseils, which translates as Advice to young women on their life and their maternal duties when nursing children, "applied the scientific rigour she learned in the laboratory to her childcare manual" (Lastinger, p. 175). Responding to women's lack of access to formal education, Millet-Robinet advocates a form of experiential learning with strong parallels to the scientific method of experimentation, analysis, and repetition. Her ultimate goal in doing so was to improve domestic efficiency, thereby freeing up for women "time to be productive in fields her readers thought were the prerogative of men: education, political engagement, charitable undertakings" (Lastinger, p. 188)Matthieu Bonafous (1793-1852) presumably met Millet-Robinet through his work in the

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