8vo. xii, 163pp. With an engraved frontispiece and five further engraved plates by Maria Flaxman. Contemporary gilt-tooled half calf, marbled boards. Rubbed and marked, with surface loss and staining to boards, joints starting. Lengthy inked gift inscription to FFEP. Very occasional light scattered spotting.

A revised edition of English writer and Cowper biographer 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 Romantic visionary William Blake.