The Lady's Monthly Museum, Or polite repository of Amusement and Instruction: Being an assemblage of whatever can tend to please the Fancy interest the Mind or exalt the Character of The British Fair. Vol. XVI

London: Vernor and Hood, 1806. Very Good. January to June 1806. 12mo (in 6s), pp. ii, 430 + five b/w engraved frontispieces (lacks April frontis: "An elegant Portrait" of Lady Ogilby) and a second b/w plate to January issue, plus six hand-coloured fashion plates. Polished tree calf, spine divided by gilt rules, red and black morocco labels, other compartments tooled centrally in gilt, gilt board-edge tooling. Front joint, edges and extremities rubbed, corners bruised. Binders ticket to front pastedown: "Bound by H Earnshaw/ Printer Bookseller/ & Book Binder./ Colne,/ Lancashire./ Copper plate printing neatly executed," two POIs in sepia ink to ffep: "Mary Wiglesworth./........Townhead...." and underneath, in a less prepossessing hand: "Walter[?] Wilson/ Slaidburn". Some browning, including title page, offsetting from colour plates, occasional marks and fox spots, lacks pp. 133-4 (leaf N1, the 'Cabinet of Fashion' text for February) and April frontispiece (see above). Nevertheless, a handsome copy of the sixteenth volume of the popular monthly woman's magazine. Includes a tribute, plus "elegant Portrait" of the Bluestocking polymath, poet and translator Mrs Elizabeth Carter, who had died on 19 February 1806: "one of the great ornaments of their sex; a venerable and illustrious example of female literary talent, and most worthy member of society"; various tributes to Admiral Nelson also appear. The Lady's Monthly Museum (1798-1832) featured biographies, essays, poems and serialised stories, as well as the 'Cabinet of Fashion' with its hand-coloured engravings. The magazine was advertised as "a convenient size for the pocket". The book's first owner is likely Mary Wig(g)lesworth (1776/8-1861), second wife of Henry Wiglesworth (1758-1838), of Townhead, Rector and Squire of Slaidburn in the Ribble Valley, West Riding of Yorkshire (now Lancashire). The Wiglesworths were significant landowners in the parish; Townhead was a 16-bedroom mansion house built in 1729 for Wiglesworth's uncle (another) Henry Wiglesworth (d.1730).