Richard Allestree, The Gentlemans Calling (1696), The Ladies Calling (1700), and The Lively Oracles Given to Us, or, The Christians Birth-Right and Duty (1696)

 

The anonymously published The Gentlemans Calling (1660) and The Ladies Calling (1673) were advertised on the title page as written by the same author as the tremendously popular The Whole Duty of Man (1657); all three, along with The Lively Oracles (1678) were written by Richard Allestree (c. 1621–1681), royalist, theologian, and provost of Eton College. The Ladies Calling was a hugely popular, if very conservative, conduct book for women. It appeared in 12 editions by 1727 and continued to make its mark well into the eighteenth century. In fact, Sarah Apetrei writes that it gained “almost canonical authority in advice manuals of the eighteenth century” (3) and goes on to argue that it actually ended up having unintended consequences as it “became a source of inspiration for a generation of women writers who, between 1680 and 1710, launched a remarkable attack on the ‘tyranny of customs’ which had excluded them from education opportunities, and consigned them to subjection in marriage” (3–4).

We cannot, therefore, know how individual women read the book, but we do see many female ownership inscriptions, such as one discussed in an earlier post on this blog.

The woman owner of this particular copy, Mary Phipps, had it bound with the two other works by Allestree, allowing for ready comparison of the moral recommendations for women with those for men, along with the general recommendations for Christians given in The Lively Oracles. The style of Phipps’ handwriting suggests that she made her inscription in the 18th century, further proof of Allestree’s continued popularity.

Source: Book offered for sale by Flora Books on 6/10/19. Images used with permission.

UPDATE 3/26/23: A commenter has suggested that Mary Phipps, her great-great-aunt, may have been owner of this book. Ms. Phipps died in 1933 and was the author of Liza Jane and the Kinkies and other children’s books. While I have examined a signature of Ms. Phipps, I am not convinced that she is the same as the Allestree book owner, but in any case, the conundrum does illustrate the difficulty of dating handwriting!

Further Reading

Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism, and Religion in Early Enlightenment England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

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