English Books and Manuscripts from Pickering & Chatto

Here is a woman who didn't need a man's help. It was the other way around: Genuine Memoirs of Jane Elizabeth Moore...Written by herself, published in 1785. Mrs. Moore was a whiz at managing a business. Her mother died when she was young, and she was passed around to various relatives, including a great-grandmother, before returning to her father's house at the age of 12. Due to her skills, she was quickly put in charge of her father's books, and soon was effectively running his business. She preferred business to marriage, but finally consented to marrying Mr. Moore, and ended up running his business as well. She pressed her father to dower her “a daughter's share” of his business, only to find out when he died that he had not done so. He apparently resented her business skills being better than his own. She writes, “I may be pardoned if I say my grief much sooner subsided, th[a]n it would otherwise have done.” As for needing the help of a man, Mrs. Moore writes that she told her would-be husband, “I was fully determined...not to be obligated to any man breathing.” Unfortunately, her husband died in 1781 heavily in debt, and she was imprisoned for 8 months. When she got out, she wrote this three-volume book, which includes both her personal story and information about business. She shows up again in the 1790s writing poetry in Ireland, but what became of her after that is unknown. Item 94. £2,500 (US $4,007).

Oddly, despite her career in what was then a man's world, Jane Moore was not a feminist, but more of a traditional moralist. In other words, she was not like her literary contemporary Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist and a liberal thinker for her time. One man who was unappreciative of her was Rev. Richard Polwhele, who wrote about his dislike in The Unsex'd Females, a poem... In it, Wollstonecraft is portrayed as Satan. Mary Wollstonecraft died in childbirth in 1797, three years before this book was published. In a classically tasteless note, Polwhele writes that he can't help but believe that the “Hand of Providence” was involved in her death, “as she died a death that strongly marked the distinction of the sexes, by pointing out the destiny of women, and the diseases to which they are liable.” Item 111. £1,350 (US $2,164).

Pickering & Chatto may be reached at +44 (0)20 7491 2656 or rarebooks@pickering-chatto.com. Their website is found at www.pickering-chatto.com.