‎PRINGY, MADAME DE.‎
‎Les differens caractères des femmes du siecle avec la description de l'amour propre. - [EARLY FEMMINIST WORK]‎

‎Paris, Medard-Michel Brunet, 1699. 8vo. In a nice contemporary Cambridge-style mirror binding with four raised bands and richly gilt spine. Small paper-label pasted on to top of spine. A nice and clean copy. (20), 278, (1) pp.‎

Reference : 61024

‎Second edition of this scarce early work first published in 1693 in which the author traces and analyses the causes of womens lack of rights and proposes methods for enabling women to improve themselves. The fact that the present work was re-edited five years after its initial release indicates a certain degree of popular appeal. However, not much is known about Pringy: “Her name appears most often in the pages of the monthly French gazette, Le Mercure galant, which announced both the text’s initial publication in 1693 and again its second edition a few months prior to publication. If nothing can defini¬tively be asserted regarding Pringy’s readership, we can gather, from the fact that the Mercure was instrumental in disseminating (some might say advertising) and thus determining trends and fashions, that Pringy enjoyed some attention for her works. Though we may never know the extent to which the Caracteres was given to young girls with the intent of correct¬ing or preventing these vices, Pringy’s treatise is unique in comparison to most contemporaneous moral analyses of women by women because of its ostensible pedagogical goal.” (LaPorta, “The Truth about Reasoning”: Veiled Propaganda and the Manipulation of Absolutist Authority in Eustache Le Noble’s La Pierre de touche politique (1688–1691))‎