The longest-running war is the battle over how women should behave. “Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman” examines six centuries of advice literature, analyzing the print origins of gendered expectations that continue to inform our thinking about women’s roles and abilities. Close readings of numerous conduct manuals from Britain and America, written by men and women, explain and contextualize the legacy of sexism as represented in prescriptive writing for women from 1372 to the present. While existing period-specific studies of conduct manuals consider advice literature within the society that wrote and read them, “Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman” provides the only analysis of both the volumes themselves and the larger debates taking place within their pages across the centuries. Combining textual literary analysis with a social history sensibility while remaining accessible to expert and novice, this book will help readers understand the on-going debate about the often-contradictory guidelines for female behavior.

A popular genre from colonial times to 1900, the conduct book provides the youthful reader with authoritative guidance about right moral, religious, and gender role behavior. With the aim of teaching the young what they need to know--and believe--about society's expectations for the ideal young man and woman, the genre codified true American manhood and womanhood. Until now, conduct books have been mixed in and cataloged with books on manners, etiquette, education, religion, or success. This guide provides an analytic and historical overview of the conduct book as a genre and its cultural work in America. With an annotated bibliography of over 500 books, it is the first work to provide scholars interested in studying the cultural stance, intent, and importance of conduct-of-life texts with easy access to conduct books. The book provides an extensive overview of the conduct book, with separate chapters on the development of conduct books for children, men, and women. The fully annotated bibliography, which lists the conduct books by their intended audience, includes 196 conduct books for children, 142 texts for young men, 188 titles for young women, and 57 texts for adults of either sex. In addition, the work includes a short selected bibliography of secondary sources and an index. This guide opens the genre for further study.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

Do unto others as you would others should do to you. You can never be rude if you bear the rule always in mind, for what lady likes to be treated rudely? True Christian politeness will always be the result of an unselfish regard for the feelings of others, and though you may err in the ceremonious points of etiquette, you will never be im polite. Politeness, founded upon such a rule, becomes the expression, in graceful manner, of social virtues. The spirit of politeness consists in a certain attention to forms and ceremonies, which are meant both to please others and ourselves, and to make others pleased with us ;a still clearer definition may be given by saying that politeness is goodness of heart put into daily practice; the.re can be no true, politeness without kindness, purity, singleness of heart, and sensibility. Many believe that politeness is but a mask worn in the world to conceal bad passions and impulses, and to make a show of possessing virtues not really existing in the heart; thus, that politeness is merely hypocrisy and dissimulation. Do not believe this; be certain that those who profess such a doctrine are practising themselves the deceit they condemn so much.

Lauded for its contribution to the theory and conceptualization of the field of women's history and for its sensitivity to the differences of class, ethnicity, race, and culture among women, The Majority Finds Its Past became a classic volume in women's history following its publication in 1979. This edition includes a foreword by Linda K. Kerber, introducing a new generation of readers to Gerda Lerner's considerable body of work and highlighting the importance of the essays in this collection to the development of the field that Lerner helped establish.