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IRISH REGISTER. The Irish Register : or a list of the Duchess Dowagers, Countesses

Currency:EUR Category:Antiques / Books & Manuscripts Start Price:10.00 EUR Estimated At:500.00 - 700.00 EUR
IRISH REGISTER. The Irish Register : or a list of the Duchess Dowagers, Countesses

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Auction Date:2012 Oct 20 @ 11:00 (UTC+1)
Location:38 Molesworth Street, Dublin, Dublin, ., Ireland
IRISH REGISTER. The Irish Register : or a list of the Duchess Dowagers, Countesses, Widow Ladies, Maiden Ladies, Widows, and Misses of large fortunes in England, as register'd by the Dublin Society, for the use of their members. Together with the places of their several abodes. Also the charge given by their president, at their last general assembly. Dublin printed : London re-printed, for T. Cooper at the Globe in Pater-Noster-Row, 174256-pages, 8vo, with a small, faint, unobtrusive old stamp in a few places, but still a very good copy in recent marbled paper boards. One of two editions published at London during the same year. A witty satire on the alleged propensity of Irish fortune-hunters to seek marriage with the rich ladies of England, prompted, one presumes, by the case of Edward Hussey, Earl of Beaulieu, the Irish husband of an English heiress. It "begins with a spoof president's speech to the Hibernian Society, 'advising a speedy draught of their members to be imported into England for the service of the English ladies.' This will ‘reduce our present calamities by cultivating those valuable talents which nature has kindly provided us with’, thus counteracting ‘the miserable state our dear nation is reduced to by the great number of absentees now residing in England, who spend their fortunes there … regardless of their country’s ruin’. England has to offer ‘hundreds of widows and maiden ladies of very great fortune [who] lie unoccupied and neglected’, and who might ‘by the most prevailing means’ be married and forced ‘to come and settle among us … And that you may flourish according to the dimensions of your different parts and capacities, they [the ladies – not the parts!] are distinnguished by their classes'. ‘The classes comprise 11 dowager duchesses, two dowager marchionesses, 15 dowager countesses, 27 widow ladies (all peeresses), 34 baronets’ widows, 62 maiden ladies (all titled), 106 widows (all commoners), and 538 misses. Addresses, mainly in London, are provided for all, which justifies Horace Walpole’s description of the pamphlet as ‘one of the most impudent things that ever was printed’. It concludes with ‘Orders and resolutions of the Brave and Heroic Society of Adventurers at Dublin for incorporating … British commodities.’” – Malcomson, The Pursuit of the Heiress, 103.ENGLISH PRE 1801; ENGLISH LITERATURE; SATIRE; WOMEN; IRELAND; ; ; ; ; ; ;