Womanly Virtues
LEGOUVÉ, Gabriel.
Le mérite des femmes, poëme … Paris, chez Ant. Aug. Renouard, 1818.
12mo, pp. 36; engraved frontispiece with tissue guard; damp stain to corner of frontispiece, foxing to tissue guard, some light foxing elsewhere; very good in original pale purple boards, single gilt fillet border to covers, spine lettered in gilt and decorated with gilt fillets and stars, marbled endpapers; some rubbing to boards and wear to extremities; ‘F.J.’ in gilt at foot of spine.
Scarce edition of this poem on womanly virtues by the poet, playwright, and member of the Académie française Gabriel Legouvé (1764–1812), published by Antoine-Augustin Renouard (1765–1853), the noted industrialist, political activist, publisher, bibliographer, and collector.
Legouvé’s foreword criticises the hostility towards women evinced in the works of Juvenal, Boileau, Milton, and Pope, and his verses end with a plea to respect as well as cherish women, described as ‘flowers in the desert of life’. The frontispiece, after Jean Michel Moreau, shows a mother rocking a baby in a cradle.
No copies of this edition traced in the US, and only 1 in the UK (BL).