Social Life in England and France, from the French Revolution in 1789, to that of July 1830

London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1831. FIRST EDITION. Tall 8vo, 225 x 143 mms., pp. vii [viii blank], 214, original boards, uncut, paper label on spine, which is worn with joints slightly tender The great friend of Horace Walpole, Mary Berry (1763 - 1852) and her sister, Agnes (1764–1852), were well-educated and well-travelled: Walpole described them as "the best informed and the most perfect creatures I ever saw at their age." The present book is a sequel to an earlier one, A Comparative View of the Social Life of England and France from the Restoration of Charles the Second to the French Revolution, published in 1828. The Oxford DNB conludes its entry with this assessment: "Scholars have now drawn attention to her letters and journals, for the light they throw on women's history, but her own published books remain neglected. An introspective and often melancholy temperament shows through in all her writings, but it is her correspondence with figures such as Anne Damer and the scattered confessional passages of her journals which afford the greatest insight into her sensitive and somewhat wounded spirit. The picture she gives of English society from mid-Georgian to mid-Victorian, as well as French society in the same period, is richly detailed, and gains from its nuanced treatment of individuals such as Napoleon, Mme de Staël, and Princess Caroline. She liked the princess, but regretted that 'she has not a grain of common sense' (Extracts, 2.389). Mary was also an amateur artist of moderate attainment; a few of her sketches survive."