[1824]. Small 12mo in 6s, pp. 108, [1] engraved bookseller’s advertisement for William Darton; with tipped in engraved presentation leaf, engraved frontispiece, and two further engraved plates, all three dated 1824; frontispiece and plate I with crude contemporary hand-colouring; some faint marginal dampstaining to plates, with occasional light foxing and soiling; in contemporary red morocco backed marbled boards, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, head and tail of spine and joints rubbed and worn with small nick at tail, further wear to covers and extremities. First edition of this appealing work for children by the noted historical writer Agnes Strickland (1796–1874), in which a father encourages his children Harriet and Paul, to observe and enjoy nature and the great outdoors.
Strickland is an interesting example of the entry of women into writing as a profession during the early nineteenth century. Together with her sisters Elizabeth, Sarah, Jane Margaret, Catharine Parr, Susanna Moodie, and her brother Samuel, all were encouraged to write in childhood, and indeed all but Sarah eventually became writers. Her father approved of educating girls as it strengthened the female mind. In the years following his death in 1818, she and her sister Catherine wrote dozens of children’s books anonymously, publishing with both the William Dartons’, father and son. With her sister Elizabeth, she embarked upon the ambitious series of historical works on the lives of the Queens of England and Scotland, Elizabeth in fact undertaking most of the research and writing, but refusing all publicity.
In 1856, when Mary Howitt asked Agnes to sign the petition granting legal rights in their own property to married women, Strickland refused, commenting that “the grievances, though founded in fact,” were “irremediable by human means being part and parcel of the penalties entailed by Eve’s transgressions.” (Lilly Library Catalogue of Exhibition, 1992).
The present story draws inspiration from Adelaide O’Keefe’s (1776-1865) poem, ‘The Use of Sight’, first published in Darton’s Original Poems for Infants Minds (Vol. II. 1805), and reproduces the text here on pp. 6-8.