Private Education; or, Observations on Governesses. BUREAUD-RIOFREY (Madame Antoine Martin).

First Edition. 8vo. [235 x 145 x 20 mm]. [1]f, xxxvii,[ii], 40-305, [1], [4] pp. Bound in the original moire green cloth boards, with later green cloth spine and corners, later endleaves, untrimmed edges.
London: [printed by Henry Kent Causton for] Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, and Henry Kent Causton, 1836

With four pages of advertisements for Bureaud-Riofrey's A Treatise on the Physical Education of the Female Sex, from Infancy to Womanhood. With the ink stamp of the College of Preceptors (founded in 1846 to certify teachers, thus assuring a common standard of education). Faint pencil marks in the margins. The edges of the leaves are a little brittle, but it is a good copy.

The work is rare with only three copies located, at the British Library, UCL and Harvard. There is a copy of the second edition of 1839 at Birmingham. No copies appear in auction records, and ABE does not even offer a print on demand version.

An enlightened treatise, written in London, primarily aimed at instructing governesses, but also intended to show that parents who consider their assistants as being of an inferior nature risk injuring themselves and their children. "Parents in high life see so little of their children; contribute so slightly to the great work of education; and rely so fully upon strangers; that, however excellent they may be, their daughters derive but a very small share of benefit from their good qualities; and necessarily are modelled by the person with whom they have constant intercourse. In private education therefore, the choice of a governess is most essential; her virtues, talents, manners, taste, accent, and her defects, are alike reflected in the children placed under her care".

Stock no. ebc7757