Friendly Counsel for Girls; or, Words in Season

New York: G.W. Carleton, 1868 First edition. Publisher's brick red cloth. . Octavo. Some edgewear and dampstaining. Blue endpapers. Pencil ownership signature, dated 1983, to front pastedown. Some foxing. A good copy. An advice manual chiefly concerned with guiding a young woman's approach to her education and intellectual development. Most chapters include a short didactic story with explication by the author, who urges young women (aged fourteen to seventeen) to cultivate their skills in languages, math, and the sciences. One of Cox's main pieces of advice is that girls should cultivate one skill they are particularly talented in rather than wasting their efforts attempting to develop skills to which they have no natural inclination. Cox writes, "A girl will save herself much pain and mortification by not attempting to play or sing unless her talent lies in that direction…As regards drawing and painting, too, if you possess any talent for either, by all means cultivate it; but otherwise…Surely it would be better to devote yourself to the acquirement of a language, or the study of astronomy, or history, or botany, or whatever your one talent may be" (p. 27). Cox also offers advice on marriage, friendships, etiquette, dress, and religion.