Essays on Various Subjects. By the Author of Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week. The Second Edition

London, Printed for John and Francis Rivington. 1772. 2 volumes in 1. 12mo, 165 x 98 mms., pp. [ii], 198; [iv], 173 [174 blank]. BOUND WITH: [TALBOT (Catherine)]: Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week. The Ninth Edition. London: Printed for John and Francis Rivington..., 1774. 8vo, [iv], 55 [56 adverts], including half-title. 3 volumes in one, bound in contemporary calf, rather unsympathetically rebacked. Inscribed on front paste-down end-paper: "Mary Ann Kilner/ Gift of my Mother." The author and scholar Catherine Talbot (1721-1770) did not have a propitious start to life, having been born four months after her father died at the age of 29. She was, however, ably mentored by Thomas Secker, and, as Rhoda Zuk in the Oxford DNB entry observes, she "received a liberal education, learning classical, English, French, and Italian literatures, as well as history, scripture, drawing, painting, music, and astronomy, and she benefited from the intellectual preoccupations of Secker, his associates, and family friends.... Nevertheless, by addressing matters of practical religious concern rather than abstract theological matters, and in seeking to direct the reformation of masculine conduct while arguing for the dignity of female celibacy, she constructs a specifically female voice within a male text and social universe.... A substantial proportion of Talbot's work is directed to women and their concerns about ethics, economy, manners, and learning." Like Talbot, the famous children's writer Mary Ann Kilner (1753-1831) was "highly intellectual". Kilner is also said to have had "a fertile imagination and a feeling heart" (Oxford DNB). Kilner was born Mary Ann Maze, and her mother was Marianne Maze, née de Burmann, who is believed to have died in or before 1774 (Oxford DNB). The year 1774 is also the year that the second item bound here was published. The inscription in this volume tells us that in fact Kilner's mother cannot have died before 1774, since one of the two works in the presented volume was published in the year 1774. Mary Ann Maze (1753-1831) and her future sister-in-law Dorothy Kilner (1755-1836) grew up together: "The Maze family lived near the Kilners and shared their cultivated tastes. Mary Ann and Dorothy learned, played, and wrote together" (Oxford DNB). "On 18 September 1774 Dorothy's favourite brother, Thomas (1750-1812), married Mary Ann" (Oxford DNB). Later, Mary Ann Kilner and Dorothy Kilner would become two of the most famous children's writers of their time. Both ESTC and OCLC locate several copies of the two editions of Essays on Various Subjects from 1772, but the ninth edition of Reflections on the Seven Days of the Weeks from 1774 is especially rare, with ESTC finding only two locations: the British Library, which holds two copies, and the Huntington Library, which holds one. Both of the British Library's copies are imperfect, however. The copy on offer may be the only perfect copy outside the walls of the Huntington.