PICKERING & CHATTO WOMEN An Occasional List P ICKERING & C HATTO 1 [ABINGER, Lila, Lady]. ORIGINAL ARCHIVE, including upwards of 500 Autograph letters, Documents, Newspaper Cuttings & various other Ephemera. [Various Places] [c.1895-1927]. £ 2,500 A fascinating archive of an English aristocrat at a time of great change, this collection of more than 500 letters, cuttings, and papers documents the life of Lila, Lady Abinger (1867-1941). Lila was the daughter of Sir William White, and married Shelley Scarlett, 5th Baron Abinger in 1899. As was common among ladies of her class, she had, in the years leading up to the Great War, involved herself in much charity and voluntary work; the present archive includes correspondence relating to her role as the President of the Hampshire Imperial Service College and the British Women’s Patriotic League, and Vice-President of the Girl Guides’ Association, while also documenting her support for the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women and the Anti-Socialist Union of Great Britain, among other organisations. From 1909 onwards, she was a member of the predecessor of today’s Queen’s Nursing Institute, but on the outbreak of war, she worked for the Voluntary Aid Detachment. On the death, from a heart attack, of her husband in 1917, she decided to take a more hands-on role, and work for the French Red Cross at the Hospital Militaire, 23 Montmirail before transferring to Ambulance 5/66 in 1918. The papers show the incredible bureaucracy that the War had created, partly increased by the naïvety of Lady Abinger, which is revealed in her correspondence with the French Red Cross. ‘I am afraid you will have to obtain new photographs as the Authorities are strict as to the question of their being full face and taken without a hat.’ ‘As Montmirail is in the Zone of the Armies, it will be necessary for the Médecin-Chef to apply to M. Piessac, 7th direction, Minitère de la Guerre, Paris with the request that the authorization for you to enter the Zone may be telegraphed to the French Embassy in London.’ ‘With regard to taking a dog to France, there is usually considerable difficulty…’ though the whole process took from September 1917 until March 1918 before she set foot in France. A similar bureaucracy was encountered on coming back from France after the Armistice and ‘it was quite impossible for me the grant a visa to your femme de ménage to accompany you to England.’ Included are various passes and identification documents to get her through France. After the war, she married a Frenchman and moved to the French village in which she had served. She seems to have cut her ties with the Abinger family for a while, although later correspondence shows she started to reuse her title Lady Abinger again. Many of the papers included her document her move to France, the transport of furniture and the sale of her belongings through Sotheby’s and Christies; there is even a correspondence over a claim against Lady Abinger by Schneider & Amelang through The Clearing Office (Enemy Debts) over an unpaid invoice from 31st January 1914 for copies of the Almanach de Gotha that was only settled in 1921 together with 5% interest. Being bought before hostilities, the Versailles Treaty allowed for their settlement. More ‘Liaisons Dangereuses’ 2 [ANON]. LA FEMME VERTUEUSE, ou le débauché converti par l’amour; lettres publiées pour l’instruction de quelques sociétés, dans le genre des Liaisons dangereuses. Par M. l’A. D. L. G. Premiere Partie [-Second]. A Amsterdam; Et se trouve a Paris, Chez Lefevre, Libraire … 1787. £ 950 FIRST EDITION. Two volumes bound in one, 12mo, pp. [ii], 187, [1] blank; [iv], 287, [1] blank; without the half-title to first part; some minor light foxing and marking in places, otherwise clean; uncut in the original publisher’s boards, spine with remains of paper label titled in ink, some surface wear and rubbing to extremities, but still a good copy. Published five years after Les Liaisons dangereuses, whose influence is 1 P ICKERING & C HATTO acknowledged in the subtitle, this epistolary novel proceeds along similar lines, while moving between Parisian townhouses and country chateaux. Full of revenge, kidnap, and misrepresentations, the plot deals less with the calculated war of Laclos’ novel than with various skirmishes between the sexes, described with great vigour and archness by the anonymous author. Claudine Brécourt-Villars, who edited the text for a new edition in 2012, suggests that the novel may be the work of Jean-Pierre Luchet (1740-1792), a journalist, essayist, theatre director, and friend of Voltaire. A second edition appeared in 1788. OCLC records three copies only, at Göttingen, Augsburg and the BNF. 3 [ANON]. LETTRES D’UNE DAME ANGLOISE, et de son amie a Paris, contenant les memoires de madame Williams. Premiere [- seconde] partie. A Londres, MDCCLXXI [ 1771]. £ 450 FIRST LONDRES EDITION. Two volumes, 8vo, pp. [ii], 236; [viii], 312; with woodcut title vignettes and headpieces; some foxing in places, but generally clean and fresh; in contemporary mottled calf, spines tooled in gilt with titles lettered in gilt; some light bumping to corners and extremities, but a good copy. First Londres edition of this translation of Letters between an English lady and her friend at Paris, which first appeared in English in 1770, and is sometimes, rather implausibly, attributed to the (eight-year-old) Helen Maria Williams. The novel was very quickly translated into French, first appearing in Amsterdam in 1770, before the present printing appeared in 1771; we find an exchange of letters between the (fictitious) Charlotte Williams and Mlle Adelaide d’Angeville. “This psychologically powerful novel is as memorable and affecting in its own way as Mrs Inchbald’s A Simple Story. The story of a father’s partiality and a mother’s jealousy, the sense that it offers of the vulnerability and confusion of the daughter in this situation, is acute and realistic” (Perry, p. 104). See Ruth Perry, Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748-1818, CUP, 2004; OCLC records copies at Wisconsin and Rostock. 4 [ANTHOLOGY]. LES RÉCRÉATIONS DE LA TOILETTE. Histoires, Anecdotes, Avantures amusantes & intéressantes, pour servir d’amusemens aux jeunes dames, entremêlées de quelques pieces de vers qui n’ont point encore paru. Tome Premier [-Second]. A Paris. 1775. £ 850 FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 12mo, pp. [iv], 431, [1] blank; 421, [2] table, [1] blank; minor stain in gutter of final leaf of vol. II (not affecting the text), otherwise clean crisp copies throughout; attractively bound in later marbled boards, spines with red morocco labels lettered in gilt, minor sunning to spines. First edition of this rare collection of stories, poems, and diversions, some new and some previously published, and assembled, according to the Epitre aux dames, “pour vous délasser des peines que vous donnent les fatigues de vos toilettes”. Among the works included, several of which had appeared in the Mercure de France, are tales about the dangers of novels, warnings about luxury, and a number of contes and poems describing romantic adventures and misadventures; many of the poems appear for the first time. OCLC records one copy in the UK, at the BL, and one in North America, at San Diego State. 2 P ICKERING & C HATTO 5 [AUNT AFFABLE]. AUNT AFFABLE’S PRETTY PLAY BOOKS for all Good Little Nephews & Nieces. The Child’s Book of Riddles. London, Ward & Lock, [c. 1860]. £ 125 Large 8vo, pp 8, comprising 64 riddles, each with hand-coloured illustration, solutions beneath, bound in original pictorial coloured stiff yellow wrappers, rubbed and part split at spine, small stab hole in lower blank corners, light stains, but a reasonable copy of a rare and fragile publication Scarce early publication by Frederick Warne, being an attractive handcoloured book of riddles for children, published as part of the ‘Aunt Affable’ series which were enormously popular throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. OCLC records two copies, at Toronto and the BL. 6 [BANDETTINI, Teresa]. A SUA ECCELLENZA IL SIGNOR BARONE KRAY, Generale d’Artiglieria. Ode della Signora Teresa Bandettini dell’ Accademia di Mantova, ed Amarilli Etrusca in Arcadia. [Colophon:] In Mantova, dalla Regio-Ducale Stamperia dell’ Erede Pazzoni. MDCCIC [1799]. £ 400 FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. VIII; aside from some very light soiling to margins, clean and fresh throughout; stitched as issued in the original bronze paper wraps, a desirable copy. A very good copy of this uncommon ode by the Lucca poet Teresa Bandettini, addressed to Paul Kray, the Habsburg general who had commanded the Austrian forces at the siege of Mantua in 1799, the same year as this ode was printed. Bandettini (1763-1837) was born in Lucca, and entered into the Arcadia under the name Amarilli Etrusca. A noted critic of the romantic movement, she was one of most important celebratory poets of her time, greatly esteemed by the likes of Mascheroni, Bettinelli and Alfieri. Not in OCLC. 7 [BANDETTINI, Teresa et al]. PROSE E POESIE IN MORTE DEL CAVALIERE SAVERIO BETTINELLI fra gli arcadi Diodoro Delfico, recitate dai socj della R. Accademia di Mantova e dai Pastori Arcadi della colonia Virgiliana. Mantova, per Francesco Agazzi, tipografo nell’ Accademia. 1808. £ 285 FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. 100; apart from a few minor marks a clean crisp copy throughout; in contemporary marbled boards, a fine copy. A good copy of this uncommon commemorative volume marking the death of the Jesuit poet, rhetorician and critic Saverio Bettinelli (1718-1808). Bettinelli, after a period as professor of rhetoric at Venice, spent much of his life travelling through Germany, Italy and France, where he composed his best known work, Lettere dieci di Virgilio agli Arcadi, much admired by Voltaire.