Essays on Professional Education..

London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1809 First edition of one of the rarer books in the Edgeworth canon. This work was conceived by Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), leading British disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the area of education, and finished by his daughter, novelist and pioneering education writer Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849). A second edition was published in 1812. Original boards, uncut, sympathetically rebacked in later board spine, new printed paper label, back pastedown filled in at lower corner, to style. Quarto. With an Appendix of notes, and an index. Endpapers foxed, occasional minor foxing to text, a couple of clean tears in text, with no loss. A very good copy With the bookplate of John Lawson (1932-2019), esteemed British bookseller who succeeded his father in the firm E.M. Lawson & Co. The younger Lawson served as I.L.A.B. president from 1982 to 1984. Maria Edgeworth bibliographer Bertha Coolidge Slade notes: "Professional Education is another one of the volumes included in the list of Miss Edgeworth's works in which Mr. Edgeworth expresses the advanced ideas of his fertile mind. Although the heaviest work in the volume fell on Maria's shoulders, her father's name is alone on the title-page." Slade goes on to quote an 1808 letter of Maria's in which she states "Professional Education…is the object of my waking and sleeping thoughts." Some if not all of the chapters were completely rewritten by her. Slade comments: "Maria made no secret of her assistance to her father, but feared the book would not be considered of value if it were known that a woman had so much part in the writing of it." Some of the chapters include: "On the Choice of a Profession;" "On the Clerical Profession;" "On the Military and Naval Professions;" "On the Education of Country Gentlemen;" "On the Education of Statesmen;" and "On the Education of a Prince." (Inventory #: 17884)