The Mirror of the Graces; or, The English Lady's Costume: combining and harmonising taste and judgment, elegance and grace, modesty, simplicity, and economy, with fashion in dress; and adapting the various articles of female embellishments to different ages, forms, and complexions; to the seasons of the year, rank, and situation in life: with useful advice on female accomplishments, politeness, and manners; the cultivation of the mind and the disposition and carriage of the body: offering also the most efficacious means of preserving beauty, health, and loveliness . . . By a Lady of Distinction, who has witnessed and attentively studied what is esteemed truly graceful and elegant amongst the most refined nations of Europe

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Original printed boards. Spine a little worn (20 x 10mm fragment missing at head), upper cover (with front free endpaper) detached, covers a little darkened, some mild foxing in text, nevertheless a very fresh, unfancy copy in condition internally almost as published. With the ownership inscription, "A Reade 1811", and four coloured plates, "Morning or Domestic Dresses", "Carriage or Promenade Dresses", "Evening Dresses" and "Opera or Full Dresses"; 6pp. of publisher's advertisements at end - Crosby's specialized in self-improvement books, their titles including The Frugal Housewife; or, Complete Woman Cook, Crosby s Ladies' Fortune Telling Pocket Book and The Young Lady's New Guide to Arithmetic. "The fashion of educating all ranks of young women alike," writes the Lady of Distinction, sternly, "is the cause why all ranks of women attempt to dress alike. If the brazier's daughter is taught to sing, dance, and play like the heiress to an earldom, we must not be surprised that she will also emulate the decorations of her rival. We see her imitate the coronet on lady Mary's brows; and though miss Molly may possibly not be able to have hers of gems, foil-stones produce a similar effect; then she looks for rings, bracelets, armlets, to give appropriate grace to the elegant arts she has learnt to practise; and when she is thus arrayed, she plays away the wanton and the fool, till some libertine of fortune buys her either for a wife or a mistress.". N° de ref. del artículo 27M100174

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