Catalogue Number 7 - Susanne Schulz-Falster

through the printing of the Censo Espanol of 1787, as being the Wrst one
published. The Censo Espanol was a general census, covering the whole nation;
it was repeated in 1797. A complete census of the dominions of Castile
had been taken as early as 1594, but the present one is the Wrst general
population census to be published. The Wrst American census was held in
1790, the Wrst British and French followed in 1801.
The forty-three tables give a summary of the results of the census, divided
by kingdom, province and island from Andalucia to Valladolid, including
the Canary Islands. The population Wgures are given by sex, unmarried,
married, widow and widower, by religion, profession (i.e. class distinction),
including the clergy, hidalgos, labradores, jornalores, artesanos,
criados, military etc, and by age. The Wrst four tables compare the 1787 data
with an earlier census taken by the church in 1768/69. The Wgures were
compiled under the direction of Floridablanca (1728–1808).
Goldsmiths’–Kress 13352; see Palgrave I, p. 242; RLIN lists copies at Berkeley and
the University of Michigan only.
Feminist Classic
62 [POULAIN DE LA BARRE, François.] De l’Égalité des deux
Sexes, Discours physique et moral, où l’on voit l’importance de se
défaire des Préjugéz. A Paris, chez Jean du Puis, 1673. £1000
Small 12mo, pp. [xvi], 243, [5] advertisement and privilege; with
printer’s engraved monogram on the title-page, typographic head- and
tail-pieces; text in two parts, with consecutive pagination; some light
dust-soiling to title page, else just lightly browned; contemporary
mottled calf, spine in compartments, gilt; discreet repairs to joints and
lower corner; leather dulled due to acid erosion; a good copy.
susanne schulz-falster rare books catalogue seven
First edition of Poulain de la Barre’s important work on feminism. Applying
Cartesian reasoning to the status of women in society, Poulain de la
Barre argued that only custom and prejudice, not nature, excluded women
from the professions and from public life.
This is one of the most important feminist texts prior to the eighteenth
century and the only one to be translated into English, under the title The
Woman as Good as the Man (1677). Poulain de la Barre (1647–1723), a
cleric and Docteur de Sorbonne, was an outspoken and sophisticated radical
on feminist issues and decried the moderate and ephemeral feminism of
the seventeenth century. ‘De l’égalité des deux sexes intentionally eschewed
the convenient handbook catalogue of woman’s virtues, habits, and learning
and centred on the more diYcult and ingrained problems of intellectual,
social, and sex prejudice’ [Seidel].
Together with two separate but related works, De l’excellence des hommes
contre l’égalité des deux sexes (1675) and Dissertation ou discours pour servir de
troisème partie au livre de l’égalité des deux sexes (1690), this work documents
Poulain de la Barre’s extraordinary and innovative thinking as regards women’s
position in society. His work was almost entirely overlooked until the
beginning of the twentieth century, when it entered the canon of early feminist
texts.
Cioranescu XVI 55462; Gay II, c72; see Michael A. Seidel, Poulain de la Barre’s
‘The Woman as Good as the Man’. Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XXXV, 1974,
p. 499.
Christopher Columbus
63 ROBERTSON, William. Vita di Cristofano Colombo primo
Discopritore di America. In Venezia, appresso Giovani Gatti, 1778.
£450
8vo, pp. 142 including engraved frontispiece portrait by Gatti after
Ricci; occasional light spotting; uncut in nineteenth-century decorative
wrappers; a good copy.
First edition of this original excerpt from Robertson’s History of America,
published in English and in the Italian translation the previous year. This
biographical sketch of Christopher Columbus is in fact book II of the work,
in the translation of Antonio Pillori.
Robertson’s History was highly inXuential at the time and was instantly
translated into German, Italian and French. ‘Its vivid descriptions and
philosophical disquisitions on aboriginal society captivated the literary
world, while the outbreak of the war lent the book pertinent public interest
and rendered it more popular than either of its predecessors’ (DNB).
NUC, RLIN and OCLC record just one copy at the Library of Congress, together
with one copy of the second edition (1794) at Brown University; not in Sabin.