An Enquiry Into the Duties of the Female Sex

London: T. Cadell and W. Davis, 1806. 8vo, pp. 448. Contemporary gilt tooled polished calf, title and decoration in gilt to spine. Marbled endpapers. Spine rebacked and dulled, contemporary bookplate to front pastedown. A very well preserved copy. Seventh edition. Gisborne's book was first published in 1797 -- the year Mary Wollstonecroft died, and five years after the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. An Enquiry Into the Duties of the Female Sex went through eight corrected editions in the ten years following its publication, and was a significant contribution to the public conversation of the time. Gisborne [1758-1846] was an Anglican priest, and his advice to women was coloured accordingly -- their subordination to men was innate and God-given, for example. But he was no hypocrite. His An Enquiry Into the Duties of Men had appeared three years earlier and, as a central member of the abolitionist Clapham Sect, he knew and preached that slavery was incompatible with biblical teaching. A well preserved copy.