8vo. [3], vi-xii, 165pp, [1]. With six engraved plates. Without half-title. Bound by Barratt of Oxford in contemporary gilt-tooled red calf, contrasting calf lettering-piece, A trifle rubbed, sunned. Marbled endpapers, later armorial bookplate of Sir Mervyn Lloyd Peel to FEP, early inked ownership inscriptions of Catherine Cleaver and Frances Peel to recto of blank fly-leaf.

A handsomely bound copy of William Hayley's (1745-1820) most significant work, a didactic allegorical poem, composed in rhyming couplets, designed to teach young women the virtues of possessing a pleasant nature. First published in 1781, the work ran through in excess of ten editions by the turn of the nineteenth-century. The present edition is illustrated with six 'new original designs' by Maria Flaxman (1768-1833), engraved by William Blake.

Sir Mervyn Lloyd Peel (1856-1929), Conservative politician who held the offices of Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace.