Five Rare Books for Collectors: Education

Highlights from Bernard Quaritch's latest catalogue, Education, include:

Library for Youth, or Book-Case of Knowledge (London: Printed for John Wallis … by T. Gillet or J. Cundee … 1800)

Ten volumes covering a wide range of subjects including geography, astronomy, grammar, arithmetic, mytholody, English history, natural history, botany. A fine and scarce complete set of with all 10 volumes in the first editions.

Parecbolae sive excerpta e corpore statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis... (Oxford, e theatro Sheldoniano, 1740)

Later edition of this essential student guide to the University of Oxford’s statutes, first published in 1670 this copy formerly belonged to charismatic Cornish dissenting preacher Thomas Wills (1740–1802) when he was a student at Magdalen Hall. It covers many areas including matriculation and the rules of the Bodleian library as well as various banned activities such as growing long hair, visiting the city’s brothels, breaking windows, and keeping weapons.

La comédienne et le féminisme by Marcele Yrven (Paris, L. Pichon, 1914)

First edition of this feminist work on the necessity of a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre, by the famous stage and film actress Marcelle Yrven, presented to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro’s literary supplement. Yrven argues that feminism is "when women want to rise up, not to be inferior to men but to equal or even surpass them, drawing upon their intelligence, their education, their individual qualities, their activity, and their curiosity".