Cover; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part 1 Textual Strategies; 1 Between Oral and Print Cultures; 2 Authorial Anxieties; Part 2 Topoi; 3 Perceptions of Motherhood; 4 Maneuvering New Social Spaces; 5 Marriage and its Disillusions; Part 3 Reception; 6 The Cultural Landscape of the Eighteenth-Century Press; 7 The Marquise de Lambert's Avis d'une mère à sa fille; 8 Madeleine de Puisieux's Conseils à une amie; 9 Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Magasin des adolescentes and Instructions pour les jeunes dames; 10 Louise d'Epinay's Conversations d'Emilie
11 Graillard, Cerfvol, and Reyre12 Conduct Books in Early Literary History; 13 Editorial Fortunes in the Nineteenth Century; Bibliography; Index
Summary
At the same time that secular and religious authorities suppressed women's efforts to read, conduct books written specifically for girls and young unmarried women emerged as a new genre. Nadine Berenguier offers an in-depth analysis of this development in eighteenth-century France, situating conduct books in the context of Enlightenment concerns about improving education in order to reform society. Her study contributes to our understanding of how print culture in eighteenth-century France gave shape to a specific social subset of new readers: modern girls
