The Compleat Woman.

£18,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

STC 7266. Rare. ESTC records Folger (x2), Huntington , Harvard , Newberry (x2, not 3 as per ESTC), Chicago and Yale (“Imperfect”) only in the USA. The last copy recorded at auction was at Forum in 2020 and is now at the Alexander Turnbull Library in New Zealand (the same copy was sold at Sotheby’s in 1991). Before that the last copy was in Maggs catalogue 874 (1961, where we stated: “…this English translation is still little known; and the possibilities of du Bosc’s influence on English thought have scarcely been noticed; in most studies of seventeenth-century education and feminine pursuits his name does not appear at all.”) A translation of part 1 of L’honneste femme first published in Paris in 1632 and containing fifteen essays the work was revised and re-printed throughout the first part of the 17th century in France and a second and third part were subsequently published (in 1634 and 1636). The present English translation is based on the third French edition of 1635 and contains eighteen essays. A variant of this edition exists with “Witten” in the title. According to the printed STC Hodgkinson printed quires B-P and Harper the rest - the section printed by Hodgkinson is significantly more browned than the rest of the text. An important translation of one of the first “feminist” works to be printed in England: with sections on reading, conversation, reputation, chastity, beauty and education. “Jacques Du Bosc treats women as reasonable and moral beings able to think crit

• Year: 1639

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