The Young Ladies Conduct: Or Rules for Education, Under several Heads; With Instructions upon Dress, both before and after Marriage. And Advice to Young Wives

London Printed, and Sold by John Brotherton at the Bible in Cornhill, 1722. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 183 x 113 mms., pp. xl, 134 [135 - 136 Contents], later 18th century calf, spine ornately gilt in compartments, red leather label; short tear in fore-margin of front free end-paper, front joint meticulously restored, a very good to fine copy, with two contemporary or near-contemporary autographs on the title-age, "Sarah Townley" on the top margin and "W Townley" on the lower margin. Little is known of the dancing master John Essex (d. 1744), but by 1706 he was working in London at Drury Lane Theatre, and he published or contributed to various works on dancing. In the Oxford DNB, Moira Goff writes that the present book was "conventional, except for its emphasis on the usefulness of dancing. It discussed qualities desirable in women, such as chastity and industry, as well as those to be avoided or corrected, such as pride and vanity; it also identified music, drawing, embroidery, and housewifery as among the proper employments for young ladies. Essex seems to have drawn many of his precepts from The Adventures of Telemachus, a translation of Fénelon's Télémaque." The last six pages of the work list 36 injunctions to parents about the rearing of their daughters. In 1728, Essex published a translation of Pierre Rameau's Le Maître à danser It was re-issued in 1731, with a cancel title-page.