About Woman, Love, and Marriage

New York: G.W. Carleton & Company, 1868 First edition. Publisher's green cloth, ruled and stamped decoratively in blind, gilt spine, light blue endpapers. Octavo. Woodcut headpiece and vignettes, initial letters. Binding extremities lightly rubbed. Trivial soiling to cloth, a few very minor stains not affecting text, endpapers lightly foxed, bookplate on front pastedown. A very good, bright copy of a scarce book Frederick Saunders (1807-1902) was a London-born librarian and writer, who relocated to New York in order to open a branch of his family's bookselling firm. He petitioned Congress for the passage of an act that sought to protect both American and British authors; though it was backed by George Bancroft, Henry Clay, William Cullen Bryant, and Washington Irving, it failed to pass. For a time, he was the editor of The New York Post and was the assistant librarian at the Astor Library, later becoming its head librarian. About Woman, Love, and Marriage is both a work of advice and an interesting piece of "pro-marriage" propaganda, with Saunders noting that "The question of the decline of marriage, -- now so much talked about –, is of vital importance, not merely to society at large, but of paramount concern to woman, since it involves the greatest interest of her life...To the unmarried portion of the sex...the subject proposed to be discussed can scarcely fail of awakening interest, since – being the great event of woman's life – it simply urges the adoption of an admitted prerogative and duty..." (p. vii-viii). About Woman, Love, and Marriage is divided into four sections: I. Concerning Celibacy, II. The Ruling Passion, III. Wedded Life, and IV. Modern Impediments to Marriage.