352J [OLIVIER, Jacques, or Alexis TROUSSET].
A Discourse of Women, shewing their Imperfections alphabetically. Newly translated out of the French into English.
London: printed in the year 1679. Sold
12mo (135 × 70 mm), pp. [4], 185, [1], without initial blank leaf. Woodcut headpiece (with snakes) to dedication. Quite dust-stained/browned, closely-cut at foredge, usually resulting merely in a short margin, but just touching text of a handful of leaves towards the opening. Eighteenth-century panelled sprinkled calf with stencilled diapered lozenge to sides, borders in gilt and blind, black floral cornerpieces, spine with large red morocco label and three panels with cinquefoil tools in gilt. Rubbed, joints starting, spine chipped at head and foot. Contemporary purple shelf mark: ‘Lib J.9-no.8-’
An otherwise unrecorded issue of a notorious misogynist satire, Alphabet de l’imperfection et malice des femmes (1617), first published in English in 1662. According to Athenae Oxonienses, the translator was Richard Banke of Lincoln College. It was reprinted in 1672 and 1673 and this is a reissue of unsold sheets of the 1673 edition with a new title, dated but without imprint. All editions are rare. This issue not in Wing (cf. O284A-C for the other edition/ issues). See Felicity Nussbaum, The Brink of all we hate: English Satires on Women, 1660-1750, p. 178n.
ESTC Citation No. R22566
Olivier, Jacques.
London : printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun in Ivy-lane, M.DCLXII. [1662]
Physical descr. [4], 204 p. ; 8⁰.
General note Translation of: Olivier, Jacques. Alphabet de l’imperfection et malice des femmes. Leaf pi2r numbered 205. [A]² B-N⁸ O⁶. Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), O284A
Copies – Brit.Isles : British Library, Cambridge University
London School of Economics.
Copies – N.America\ Folger Shakespeare
Huntington Library
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
ESTC Citation No. R229574
Olivier, Jacques. A discourse of women, shewing their imperfections alphabetically. Newly translated out of the French into English. London : printed for R.T. and are to be sold in Little Britain, [1673.]
Physical descr. [6], 185, [1] p. ; 12⁰.
Copies – Brit.Isles :
British Library
Oxford University Bodleian Library
Copies – N.America\ Duke University
Newberry
Yale University
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346J J.B. Gent.
The young lovers guide,
or, The unsuccessful amours of Philabius, a country lover; set forth in several kind epistles, writ by him to his beautious-unkind mistress. Teaching lover
s how to comport themselves with resignation in their love-disasters. With The answer of Helena to Paris, by a country shepherdess. As also, The sixth Æneid and fourth eclogue of Virgil, both newly translated by J.B. Gent.
London : Printed and are to be Sold by the Booksellers of London, 1699. $3,500
Octavo, A4, B-G8,H6 I2( lacking 3&’4) (A1, frontispiece Present; I3&’4, advertisements lacking ) inches [8], 116, [4] p. : The frontispiece is signed: M· Vander Gucht. scul:. 1660-1725,
This copy is bound in original paneled sheep with spine cracking but cords holding Strong.
A very rare slyly misogynistic “guide’ for what turns out be emotional turmoil and Love-Disasters !
Writ by Philabius to Venus, his Planetary Ascendant.
Dear Mother Venus!
Wing (2nd ed.), B131; Arber’s Term cat.; III 142
Copies – Brit.Isles : British Library
Cambridge University St. John’s College
Oxford University, Bodleian Library
Copies – N.America : Folger Shakespeare
Harvard Houghton Library
Henry E. Huntington
Newberry
UCLA, Clark Memorial Library
University of Illinois
Engraved frontispiece of the Mistress holding a fan, title within double rule border, 4-pages of publisher`s advertisements at the end Contemporary calf (worn). . FIRST EDITION. . The author remains unknown.
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A collection of Poems and Letters by Christian mystic and prolific writer, Jeanne-Marie Guyon published in Dublin.
348J François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon 1651-1715 & Josiah Martin 1683-1747 & Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon 1648-1717
A dissertation on pure love, by the Arch-Bishop of Cambray. With an account of the life and writings of the Lady, for whose sake The Archbishop was banish’d from Court: And the grievous Persecution she suffer’d in France for her Religion. Also Two Letters in French and English, written by one of the Lady’s Maids, during her Confinement in the Castle of Vincennes, where she was Prisoner Eight Years. One of the Letters was writ with a Bit of Stick instead of a Pen, and Soot instead of Ink, to her Brother; the other to a Clergyman. Together with an apologetic preface. Containing divers letters of the Archbishop of Cambray, to the Duke of Burgundy, the present French King’s Father, and other Persons of Distinction. And divers letters of the lady to Persons of Quality, relating to her Religious Principles
Dublin : printed by Isaac Jackson, in Meath-Street, [1739]. $ 4,000
Octavo 7 3/4 x 5 inches First and only English edition. Bound in Original sheep, with a quite primitive repair to the front board.
Fenélon’s text appears to consist largely of extracts from ’Les oeuvres spirituelles’. The preface, account of Jeanne Marie Guyon etc. is compiled by Josiah Martin. The text of the letters, and poems, is in French and English. This is an Astonishing collection of letters and poems.
“JOSIAH MARTIN, (1683–1747), quaker, was born near London in 1683. He became a good classical scholar, and is spoken of by Gough, the translator of Madame Guyon’s Life, 1772, as a man whose memory is esteemed for ‘learning, humility, and fervent piety.’ He died unmarried, 18 Dec. 1747, in the parish of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and was buried in the Friends’ burial-ground, Bunhill Fields. He left the proceeds of his library of four thousand volumes to be divided among nephews and nieces. Joseph Besse [q. v.] was his executor.
Martin’s name is best known in connection with ‘A Letter from one of the People called Quakers to Francis de Voltaire, occasioned by his Remarks on that People in his Letters concerning the English Nation,’ London, 1741. It was twice reprinted, London and Dublin, and translated into French. It is a temperate and scholarly treatise, and was in much favour at the time.
Of his other works the chief are: 1. ‘A Vindication of Women’s Preaching, as well from Holy Scripture and Antient Writings as from the Paraphrase and Notes of the Judicious John Locke, wherein the Observations of B[enjamin] C[oole] on the said Paraphrase . . . and the Arguments in his Book entitled “Reflections,” &c, are fullv considered,’ London, 1717. 2. ‘The Great Case of Tithes truly stated … by Anthony Pearson [q. v.] . . . to which is added a Defence of some other Principles held by the People call’d Quakers . . .,’ London, 1730. 3. ‘A Letter concerning the Origin, Reason, and Foundation of the Law of Tithes in England,’ 1732. He also edited, with an ‘Apologetic Preface,’ comprising more than half the book, and containing many additional letters from Fénelon and Madame Guyon, ‘The Archbishop of Cambray’s Dissertation on Pure Love, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Lady for whose sake he was banish’d from Court,’ London, 1735.
[Joseph Smith’s Catalogue of Friends’ Books; works quoted above; Life of Madame Guyon, Bristol, 1772, pt. i. errata; registers at Devonshire House; will P.C.C. 58 Strahan, at Somerset House.]
Fénelon was nominated in February, 1696, Fénelon was consecrated in August of the same year by Bossuet in the chapel of Saint-Cyr. The future of the young prelate looked brilliant, when he fell into deep disgrace.
The cause of Fénelon’s trouble was his connection with Madame Guyon, whom he had met in the society of his friends, the Beauvilliers and the Chevreuses. She was a native of Orléans, which she left when about twenty-eight years old, a widowed mother of three children, to carry on a sort of apostolate of mysticism, under the direction of Père Lacombe, a Barnabite. After many journeys to Geneva, and through Provence and Italy, she set forth her ideas in two works, “Le moyen court et facile de faire oraison” and “Les torrents spirituels”. In exaggerated language characteristic of her visionary mind, she presented a system too evidently founded on the Quietism of Molinos, that had just been condemned by Innocent XI in 1687. There were, however, great divergencies between the two systems. Whereas Molinos made man’s earthly perfection consist in a state of uninterrupted contemplation and love, which would dispense the soul from all active virtue and reduce it to absolute inaction, Madame Guyon rejected with horror the dangerous conclusions of Molinos as to the cessation of the necessity of offering positive resistance to temptation. Indeed, in all her relations with Père Lacombe, as well as with Fénelon, her virtuous life was never called in doubt. Soon after her arrival in Paris she became acquainted with many pious persons of the court and in the city, among them Madame de Maintenon and the Ducs de Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, who introduced her to Fénelon. In turn, he was attracted by her piety, her lofty spirituality, the charm of her personality, and of her books. It was not long, however, before the Bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese Saint-Cyr was, began to unsettle the mind of Madame de Maintenon by questioning the orthodoxy of Madame Guyon’s theories. The latter, thereupon, begged to have her works submitted to an ecclesiastical commission composed of Bossuet, de Noailles, who was then Bishop of Châlons, later Archbishop of Paris, and M. Tronson; superior of-Saint-Sulpice. After an examination which lasted six months, the commission delivered its verdict in thirty-four articles known as the “Articles d’ Issy”, from the place near Paris where the commission sat. These articles, which were signed by Fénelon and the Bishop of Chartres, also by the members of the commission, condemned very briefly Madame Guyon’s ideas, and gave a short exposition of the Catholic teaching on prayer. Madame Guyon submitted to the condemnation, but her teaching spread in England, and Protestants, who have had her books reprinted have always expressed sympathy with her views. Cowper translated some of her hymns into English verse; and her autobiography was translated into English by Thomas Digby (London, 1805) and Thomas Upam (New York, 1848). Her books have been long forgotten in France.
Jeanne Marie Guyon
b. 1648, Montargis, France; d. 1717, Blois, France
A Christian mystic and prolific writer, Jeanne-Marie Guyon advocated a form of spirituality that led to conflict with authorities and incarceration. She was raised in a convent, then married off to a wealthy older man at the age of sixteen. When her husband died in 1676, she embarked on an evangelical mission to convert Protestants to her brand of spirituality, a mild form of quietism, which propounded the notion that through complete passivity (quiet) of the soul, one could become an agent of the divine. Guyon traveled to Geneva, Turin, and Grenoble with her mentor, Friar François Lacombe, at the same time producing several manuscripts: Les torrents spirituels (Spiritual Torrents); an 8,000-page commentary on the Bible; and her most important work, the Moyen court et très facile de faire oraison (The Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer, 1685). Her activities aroused suspicion; she was arrested in 1688 and committed to the convent of the Visitation in Paris, where she began writing an autobiography. Released within a few months, she continued proselytizing, meanwhile attracting several male disciples. In 1695, the Catholic church declared quietism heretical, and Guyon was locked up in the Bastille until 1703. Upon her release, she retired to her son’s estate in Blois. Her writings were published in forty-five volumes from 1712 to 1720.
Her writings began to be published in Holland in 1704, and brought her new admirers. Englishmen and Germans–among them Wettstein and Lord Forbes–visited her at Blois. Through them Madame Guyon’s doctrines became known among Protestants and in that soil took vigorous root. But she did not live to see this unlooked-for diffusion of her writings. She passed away at Blois, at the age of sixty-eight, protesting in her will that she died submissive to the Catholic Church, from which she had never had any intention of separating herself. Her doctrines, like her life, have nevertheless given rise to the widest divergences of opinion. Her published works (the “Moyen court” and the “Règles des assocées à l’Enfance de Jésus”) having been placed on the Index in 1688, and Fénelon’s “Maximes des saints” branded with the condemnation of both the pope and the bishops of France, the Church has thus plainly reprobated Madame Guyon’s doctrines, a reprobation which the extravagance of her language would in itself sufficiently justify. Her strange conduct brought upon her severe censures, in which she could see only manifestations of spite. Evidently, she too often fell short of due reserve and prudence; but after all that can be said in this sense, it must be acknowledged that her morality appears to have given no grounds for serious reproach. Bossuet, who was never indulgent in her regard, could say before the full assembly of the French clergy: “As to the abominations which have been held to be the result of her principles, there was never any question of the horror she testified for them.” It is remarkable, too, that her disciples at the Court of Louis XIV were always persons of great piety and of exemplary life.
On the other hand, Madame Guyon’s warmest partisans after her death were to be found among the Protestants. It was a Dutch Protestant, the pastor Poiret, who began the publication of her works; a Vaudois pietist pastor, Duthoit-Mambrini, continued it. Her “Life” was translated into English and German, and her ideas, long since forgotten in France, have for generations been in favour in Germany, Switzerland, England, and among Methodists in America. ”
EB
P.144 misnumbered 134. Price from imprint: price a British Half-Crown. Dissertain 16p and Directions for a holy life 5p. DNB includes this in Martin’s works
Copies – Brit.Isles. : British Library, Dublin City Library, National Library of Ireland Trinity College Library
Copies – N.America. : Bates College, Harvard University, Haverford Col , Library Company of Philadelphia, Newberry, Pittsburgh Theological Princeton University, University of Illinois University of Toronto, Library
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331J Theophilis Polwheile
Aὐθέντης, Authentēs. Or A treatise of self-deniall. Wherein the necessity and excellency of it is demonstrated; with several directions for the practice of it. By Theophilus Polwheile, M.A. sometimes of Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge, now teacher of the Church at Teverton in Devon.
London: printed for Thomas Johnson, and are to be sold at the Golden-Key in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1659 $1,200
Octavo Full 18/19th century calf . Signed by B Fuller. Like the Anatomy of Melancholy Polwheile takes an enclyopedic view of Self denial in all sorts of literature. was a minister based mainly in Tiverton; the year after this was published, in the Restoration of 1660, he was ejected from his ministerial position for his religious views and for his sympathies with the Independents, who advocated for local control and for a certain freedom of religion for those who were not Catholic; because of this, he was often in trouble until the Declaration of Indulgence by James II in 1687, establishing freedom of religion in England (James II being Catholic)
Wing (2nd ed.), P2782; Thomason; E.1733[1].
Copies – N.America :General Theological Seminary & Union Theological Seminary…
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362J James FISHER and [Martha HATFIELD].
The wise virgin: or, A wonderfull narration of the various dispensations of God towards a childe of eleven years of age; wherein as his severity hath appeared in afflicting, so also his goodness both in enabling her (when stricken dumb, deaf, and blind, through the prevalency of her disease) at several times to utter many glorious truths concerning Christ, faith, and other subjects; and also in recovering her without the use of any external means, lest the glory should be given to any other. To the wonderment of many that came far and neer to see and hear her. With some observations in the fourth year since her recovery. She is the daughter of Mr. Anthony Hatfield gentleman, in Laughton in York-shire; her name is Martha Hatfield. The third edition enlarged, with some passages of her gracious conversation now in the time of health. By James Fisher, servant of Christ, and minister of the Gospel in Sheffield.
LONDON: Printed for John Rothwell, at the Fountain, in Cheap-side. 1656
$3,300
Octavo, 143 x 97 x 23 mm (binding), 139 x 94 x 18 mm (text block). A-M8, N3. Lacks A1, blank or portrait? [26], 170 pp. Bound in contemporary calf, upper board reattached, somewhat later marbled and blank ends. Leather rubbed with minor loss to extremities. Interior: Title stained, leaves soiled, gathering N browned, long vertical tear to E2 without loss, tail fore-corner of F8 torn away, with loss of a letter, side notes of B2v trimmed.
This is a remarkable survival of the third edition of the popular interregnum account of Sheffield Presbyterian minister James Fisher’s 11-year-old niece Martha Hatfield’s prophetic dialogues following her recovery from a devastating catalepsy that had left her “dumb, deaf, and blind.” Mar tha’s disease, which defies modern retro-diagnostics, was at the time characterized as “spleenwinde,” a term even the Oxford English Dictionary has overlooked.
Her sufferings were as variable as they were extraordinary the young girl at one point endured a 17-day fugue state during which her eyes remained open and fixed and she gnashed her teeth to the breaking point. In counterpoise to the horrors of her infirmity, her utterances in periods of remission and upon recovery were of great purity and sweetness; it is this stark contrast that was, and is, the persistent allure of this little book. The Wise Virgin appeared five times between 1653 and 1665; some editions have a portrait frontispiece, and it is entirely possible that the present third edition should have one at A1v, though the copy scanned by Early English Books Online does not. Copies located at Yale, and at Oxford (from which the EEBO copy was made).
Wing F1006.
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257J Jacques Ferrand
Εροτομανια Or A Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love, or EROTIQUE MELANCHOLY.
Oxford: by L. Lichfield to be sold by Edward Forrest, 1640 $6,900.
Octavo a-b8, c4, A-Y8, Z6 (First English edition.
Bound in nineteenth century English gilt tooled sheep. Ferrand approaches the medical afflictions produced by intense love. In addition to confronting the medical symptoms, Ferrand also describes the psychiatric symptoms.
Includes chapters, Whether Love-Melancholy be an Hereditary disease, or no. Whether or no by Physiognomy and Chiromancy a man may know one to be inclined to Love, and Chirurgicall Remedies, for the Prevention of Love, and erotique Melancholy. Of the psychiatric nature the doctor includes the chapters, Whether or no by Oniromancy, or the Interpretation of Dreames, one may know those that are in love, Whether or no, a Physitian may by his Art find out Love, without confession of the Patient, and Of Melancholy, and its several kinds. Other chapters discuss astrology, external and internal symptoms, medicinal, methodical, empirical, and pharmaceutical remedies of love
Melancholy. STC 10829; Hunter & Macalpine, p. 118; NUC NF 0098305, ICU, CtY, PPL, CLSU, DFo, ICN, OU, DLC, CSmH, MH.
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