A Series of Popular Essays, Illustrative of Principles Essentially Connected with the Improvement of the Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart, in Two Volumes

Hamilton, Elizabeth

Edité par Wells and Lilly, 1817

A propos de cet article

First American edition. Volume I: Chip to spine head, ink gift note on front endpaper. Both volumes: Edges rubbed, lightly stained, pages foxed. 1817 Half-Leather. Complete in two volumes. xxxiv, 244; vi, 278 pp. Red leather spine and corners. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Hamilton (1756 or 1758 ? 23 July 1816) was a Scottish essayist, poet, satirist and novelist, who in both her prose and fiction entered into the French-revolutionary era controversy in Britain over the education and rights of women. Her first literary efforts were directed in supporting her brother Charles in his orientalist and linguistic studies. After his death in 1792 she continued to publish orientalist scholarship, as well as historical, educationalist and theoretical works. Hamilton maintained Belfast connections. She established a particularly close friendship with Martha McTier (sister of William Drennan, the founder of the United Irishmen), who pioneered schooling for poor girls. In 1793 she visited McTier in Belfast approving of her pedagogic efforts. "My little girls", boasted McTier, "do not gabble over the testament only, nor read with that difficulty which prevents pleasure in it. I keep up my number and four of them can read Fox and Pitt". In 1796 she published Translation of the Letters of the Hindoo Rajah. The two volume work in the tradition of Montesquieu and Goldsmith, follows the adventures in England of an Indian prince. His encounters with slave owners, capricious aristocrats, sceptical philosophers and belligerent women leads to his progressive disillusionment with the host culture. In 1800 Hamilton produced Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. The novel was a response to the Revolution Controversy of the 1790s, a discussion of ?revolutionary ideas about a broader franchise, primogeniture, meritocracy, marriage and divorce? Conservative loyalists such as Hannah More argued that ?there is a different bent of understanding in the sexes? while those their detractors denounced as "Jacobins", such as Wollstonecraft insisted that ?there is no sex in the soul or mind? and that women were limited only by their inadequate education. In Memoirs, Hamilton seems to occupy a middle ground, urging greater educational opportunity for women but within the bounds of a consciously Christian, middle-class morality that emphasises women's responsibility for the domestic sphere. Hamilton's most important pedagogical works followed: Letters on Education (1801), Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education (1801), Letters addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman, on the Formation of Religious and Moral Principle (1806), and Hints addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Schools (1815). In 1808, Hamilton wrote The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808), a celebrated tale of Scottish manners and mores which cast a critical eye on hardships and inequities endured by women in domestic life. It also occasioned a lengthy discourse on child education. The fictional Mr Gourley and Mrs Mason direct the teacher William Morrison's efforts to reorganise his school on a spare-the-rod monitorial system emphasising accountability and self-government. Mrs Gourley cites David Manson's account of "what he calls his play school", and in a footnote Hamilton further acknowledges Manson. His "extraordinary talents", she suggests, were exercised in Belfast "in too limited a sphere" to attract the attention they deserved.

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: A Series of Popular Essays, Illustrative of Principles Essentially Connected with the Improvement of the Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart, in Two Volumes
• Éditeur: Wells and Lilly
• Date de parution: 1817
• Reliure: Half-Leather
• Édition: First American Edition.
• État de l'article: Good
• État de la jaquette: No Jacket
• Poids: 16 onces