First edition of this manners book in verse, an oft-amusing example of how little childhood behavior has changed through the centuries – by a woman author influential in American education.
Very good.
Price: $500.00
"Intrude not where you're not desired, / Nor stay till every one is tired. / Writhe not your limbs in every shape / Of awkward gesture, like an ape."
Nancy Sproat is praised as "one of the pioneers on the path where education and pleasure walk hand in hand," producing "a shower of books" between 1812 and 1826 (Emery, 370). Alice Sproat Emery notes that "Nancy's modest fame as a writer led the publishing firm, S. Wood and Sons, of New York, to send her a set of rules with the request that she put them into verse," a project which resulted in THE SCHOOL OF GOOD MANNERS (373).
GOOD MANNERS was clearly intended for children of the middle class and above: among admonishments not to pick one's nose and not read over someone's shoulder ("tis ill-breeding") is advice to treat servants kindly, and not "with haughty scorn." This copy, exhibiting evidence of use and its owner's name clearly on the front flyleaf, is an evocative illustration of how children throughout history have always been entreated to sit still.
Read more: Alice Sproat Emery, "Nancy Sproat and Her Little Books for Good Children," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, vol. 55 no. 8.
New-York; Baltimore: Samuel Wood & Sons; Samuel S. Wood & Co, 1822. 5'' x 4''. Original thick pictorial wrappers, saddle-stitched. Frontispiece and 15 woodcut illustrations with pink hand-coloring. 46 pages. Contemporary owner name to front flyleaf, "Betsey Fosters / Book Pompey / 1827." Wrapper with edgewear, some soiling. Leaves with some marginal soiling and scattered foxing. A sound example.
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