Mar 09, 2017 - Sale 2438

Sale 2438 - Lot 57

Price Realized: $ 344
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
[HAYLEY, WILLIAM.] A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids. xix, [1], 261, [3]; [4], 250, [2]; [4], 255 pages, including half-titles. 3 volumes. 8vo, 194x124 mm, original boards, soiled and worn, later handwritten lettering piece on Volume 2 spine, portions missing from spines of Volumes 2 and 3; adhesive discoloration along repaired vertical cut in the blank outer margin of D6 in Volume 1, patches of cellophane tape discoloration on free endpapers and on the half-title in Volume 1, which lacks the front free endpaper; uncut. 19th-century Craigie House booklabels. London: T. Cadell, 1785

Additional Details

first edition. Hayley's ostensibly sympathetic defense of spinsterhood was widely perceived as the opposite by female readers; "by being almost universally condemned . . . it became a best-seller" (DLB).