The Ladies Calling In Two Parts. By the Author of the Whole Duty of Man, &c. The Eighth Impression.

Oxford, Printed at the Theater, 1705. 8vo, 189 x 120 mms., pp. [xxiv], 270 [271 Contents, 272 blank], engraved frontispiece, engraved vignette on title-page, attractively bound in Oxford panelled red morocco, gilt rules on spine; front joint slightly cracked, but a very good copy. The Church of England clergyman Richard Allestree (1621/2–1681) joined the royalist forces in 1642 and managed to keep his academic post at Oxford until 1648. After the restoration in 1660 he was restored to a powerful position in Oxford and was a serious scholar and conscientious lecturer. He published The Whole Duty of Man in 1657 and The Gentleman's Calling in 1660. The Ladies Calling was published in 1673 and is, astonishingly, not mentioned in the ODNB entry on Allestree. "It is always dangerous to ascribe considerable influence and significance to a particular text in the emergence of an ideology but the publication of Richard Allestree's The Ladies Calling in 1673 seems to have a real claim to be a signal moment in the creation of modern English femininity.... The appeal of the book undoubtedly lay in its exceptional clarity and well organised framework of exposition. It discussed what was required of women from the upper ranks of society - the class motive is pervasive - firstly in 'five general qualifications, duties, and ornaments of women' and secondly with regard to the 'respective duties' and 'peculiar cautions' of the three stages of a woman's life" (Anthony J. Fletcher: Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500 - 1800 [1999]).