Cottage Dialogues Among the Irish Peasantry.: ... With Notes and a Preface by Maria Edgeworth

London: J. Johnson and Co., 1811. First London edition. [with:] LEADBEATER, Mary. Cottage Dialogues Among the Irish Peasantry.... Part Second. With Notes and Illustrations. Dublin: Printed at the Hibernia-Press Office, for J. Johnson & Co., St. Paul's Church-Yard, London, 1813. First edition2 vols. 12mo. [2], v, [5], 343, [1] pp., with half-title; viii, [1], 212, [8, blank], [213]-275, [1] pp. Both volumes uncut in publisher's boards, printed spine label to first title; light wear to joints, housed together in a cloth folding box. The first London edition of Cottage Dialogues Among the Irish Peasantry and the first (Dublin) edition of its continuation, both in fine condition in publisher's boards, and the former with the ownership signature of Scottish literary critic and author Elizabeth Rose, Baroness of Kilravock. The Cottage Dialogues are a series of morally improving vignettes by the Irish Quaker author, diarist and chronicler of Irish rural social life, Mary Leadbeater (1758–1826). "The Dialogues was intended to give advice on household management and family organization. Leadbeater proposed the virtues of thrift, good management, and industry for the peasantry. Recipes for nourishing meals, and information on the medicinal qualities of herbs are provided through the use of conversations between friends. She later published a second series of Dialogues (1813) devoted to working men and intended to 'perform the same service to the Men of the Cottage that was in the first Part designed for their consorts'. Leadbeater also gave advice to the gentry in another set of dialogues called The Landlord's Friend (1813)" (ODNB).Maria Edgeworth's Preface to the first part praises the Dialogues for their "exact representation of the manner of being of the lower Irish, and literal transcript of their language.... [T]he following are conversations that, which seem actually to have passed in real life; the thoughts and feelings are natural, the reflections and reasoning, such as appear to be suggested by passing circumstances, or personal experience." The representations of Irish peasant speech were so accurate that it was necessary to include a glossary and notes explaining unfamiliar words and turns of phrase. Leadbeater's Advertisement to the second part notes that three editions of the first part had been printed. In addition to this London edition, there were 1811 printings in Dublin (recorded in only a few copies) and Philadelphia. For the second part, I trace only this Dublin 1813 printing.With the exceptional provenance of the Scottish literary critic and author Elizabeth Rose, Baroness of Kilravock, best-known today for her correspondence (with her cousin Henry Mackenzie, Robert Burns, and others) and her commonplace books which record her remarkably voluminous reading: she was "perhaps the best-documented eighteenth-century Scottish woman reader" (Towsey, "Women Readers," Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, II, p. 438). Burns, described her in his journals as "a true chieftain's wife, a daughter of Clephane.... Old Mrs Rose, sterling sense, warm heart, strong passions, honest pride, all in an uncommon degree."PROVENANCE: Elizabeth Rose, Baroness of Kilravock, 1747-1815 (inscription on half title of first part, "El: Rose / Kilravock 1811")