François Bruys (1708–1738)

"First edition of this introduction to the understanding of women by the French writer François Bruys (1708-1738). Quickly translated into English and Dutch, the work aims to form 'une juste idée des femmes'; Bruys discusses the education of girls, the religion and devotion of women, the effects on them of love, continence and chastity, marriage, spirit, beauty and fashion, lying and flattery, friendship, avarice, pride, and anger. One might conclude from the focus on female vices that Bruys's’ view of women is not wholly favourable. The volume concludes with a dissertation on adultery, said in the avertissement to be translated from an anonymous English essay. Bruy is known to have been in London for a few weeks at the end of 1730 when his articles on the Saurin affair caused him to take flight from Utrecht. In addition to the present work, Bruys also published a successful history of the popes, an odd juxtaposition of subjects, but there is some reason to believe that work was chiefly by another writer. OCLC records North American copies at Berkeley, UCLA, Kansas, Harvard and Princeton." (Pickering & Chatto, cat. 799, lot 23). COPAC adds copies at BL, LSE and Wellcome Library, plus Univ's Birmingham, Cambridge, Dublin, Oxford and York.… (meer)