Description
12mo, pp. vii, [i], 344, [2]. Original purple textured cloth, boards blocked in blind, spine lettered in gilt. A little toning and spotting. Sometime rebacked preserving most of original spine panel.
Modern Accomplishments, or the March of Intellect. Dedicated by permission to Her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria.
- Edinburgh: Waugh and Innes 1836
£95
Notes
The first edition of this 'silver fork' novel by Edinburgh-born Catherine Sinclair (1800-1864), which examines the lives of young women and their education. Sinclair worked as her father's secretary from age fourteen until his death in 1835, and she acknowledges his support and interest in her writing at the start of this, her second book. Besides authoring two dozen titles throughout her life, she 'founded a mission school at Water of Leith, a volunteer corps, and a Sinclair Cooking Depot in Edinburgh, to provide good cheap food for the poor. She also set up public benches and drinking-fountains in that city' (ODNB).
