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Estimate: $ 500 - $ 700
Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) The Lives of Cleopatra & Octavia.
London: Printed for the author and sold by Andrew Millar, R. & J. Dodsley, & J. Leake, 1757.
First edition, large quarto, list of subscribers present in this copy; bound in contemporary half leather with marbled paper-covered boards, rebacked, original label replaced, large margins, some internal spotting, 10 x 8 1/2 in.
"The novels of Sarah Fielding offer freshly conceived notions of masculinity and redefinitions of femininity, as well as the possibility of new relationships between men and women based on nonhierarchical structures of mutual benevolence and caring. Fielding's fifth novel, The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, was published by subscription early in the Seven Years' War, the outcome of which would make the British Empire possible. It explores the uneasy tensions of an emerging commercial culture, as gender and class relations are renegotiated in a nascent mercantile economy." (Quoted from Sara Gadeken's Gender, Empire, and Nation in Sarah Fielding's Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, in Studies in English Literature, vol. 39, no. 3, Summer 199, pages 523-538.)
