The Female Spectator. Volumes 1, 2, 3 & 4.

Full brown leather binding. Gilt volume number on the spine. No other visible title. Dimensions are for one volume.

Volumes with a most interesting ownership history which shadows the intrinsic pedigree of the books themselves. These four volumes are purported to have been belonged to slave 'Sally' Hemings owned by and mistress to USA President Thomas Jefferson, chief architect of the Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

The Female Spectator, published by Eliza Haywood between 1744 and 1746, is generally considered to be the first periodical written by women for women. Sarah "Sally" Hemings (c. 1773 – 1835) was a biracial enslaved woman who was owned by President Thomas Jefferson. Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Hemings and Jefferson had a sexual relationship for years, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children. Hemings was a half-sister of Jefferson's late wife, Martha Jefferson (née Wayles). Four of Hemings' children survived into adulthood. Hemings died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1835. The historical question of whether Jefferson was the father of Hemings' children is the subject of the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. Following renewed historical analysis in the late 20th century, and a 1998 DNA study (completed in 1999 and published as a report in 2000) that found a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Hemings' youngest son, Eston Hemings, the Monticello Foundation asserted that Jefferson fathered Eston and likely her other five children as well. However, there are some who disagree. In 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation of Monticello announced its plans to have an exhibit titled Life of Sally Hemings, and affirmed that it was treating as a settled issue that Jefferson was the father of her known children. The exhibit opened in June 2018.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams and as the first United States Secretary of State under George Washington. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels. During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence. As a Virginia legislator, he drafted a state law for religious freedom. He served as the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, during the American Revolutionary War. In 1785, Jefferson was appointed the United States Minister to France, and subsequently, the nation's first Secretary of State under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the provocative Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799, which sought to strengthen states' rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson was a longtime friend of John Adams, both serving in the Continental Congress and drafting the Declaration of Independence together. However, Jefferson's status as a Democratic-Republican would end up making Adams, a Federalist, his political rival. In the 1796 presidential election between Jefferson and Adams, Jefferson came second, which according to electoral procedure at the time, unintentionally elected him as vice president to Adams. Jefferson would later go on to challenge Adams again in 1800 and win the presidency. After concluding his presidency, Jefferson would eventually reconcile with Adams and shared a correspondence that lasted fourteen years. As president, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. Starting in 1803, Jefferson promoted a western expansionist policy, organizing the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the nation's land area. To make room for settlement, Jefferson began a controversial process of Indian tribal removal from the newly acquired territory. As a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. Jefferson was re-elected in 1804. His second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act in response to British threats to U.S. shipping. The same year, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Jefferson (while primarily a planter, lawyer, and politician) mastered many disciplines, which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics. He was an architect in the classical tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy led to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society; he shunned organized religion but was influenced by Christianity, Epicureanism, and deism. A philologist, Jefferson knew several languages. He was a prolific letter writer and corresponded with many prominent people, including Edward Carrington, John Taylor of Caroline and James Madison. Among his books is Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), considered perhaps the most important American book published before 1800. Jefferson championed the ideals, values, and teachings of the Enlightenment. During his lifetime, Jefferson owned over 600 slaves, who were kept in his household and on his plantations. Since Jefferson's time, controversy has revolved around his relationship with Sally Hemings, a mixed-race enslaved woman, and his late wife's half-sister. According to DNA evidence from surviving descendants and oral history, Jefferson fathered at least six children with Hemings, including four that survived to adulthood. Evidence suggests that Jefferson started the relationship with Hemings when they were in Paris, where she arrived at the age of 14 when Jefferson was 44. By the time she returned to the United States at 16, she was pregnant. After retiring from public office, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of U.S. independence. Presidential scholars and historians generally praise Jefferson's public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia. Jefferson ranks highly among the U.S. presidents, usually in the top five. The Female Spectator was launched anonymously in April 1744. The magazine was published on a monthly basis. It eventually ran for 24 numbers, a longer run than most periodicals of the time. The primary audience for Haywood's journal was women – possibly including the middle classes, but mostly focused on the upper strata with leisure time and money. However, judging by some letters, she also expected some men to read the journal, and she stated that she wanted it to be "as universally read as possible". A poem by an anonymous male author in The Gentleman's Magazine in December 1944 praising the Female Spectator suggests that it was indeed read by some men. The Female Spectator was loosely modelled on The Spectator by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. The new publication differed from it's inspiration principally in that it spoke exclusively from a female viewpoint. To do this it employed four characters. Firstly was the eponymous "Female Spectator" who shares the benefits of her lifetime experience with the aid of three assistants representing the three stages of female life: Euphrosine, the beautiful unmarried daughter of a wealthy merchant; the happily married and sophisticated Mira; and a Widow of Quality. Each issue of the journal was published in book form, covering a single topic in the form of an essay. Topics were usually "love and marriage", emphasising moral attitudes. The essays used a straightforward structure of premise, development, conclusion, with few digressions. The sentences were leisurely and well-balanced, with simple but forceful language. The moral instruction and advice of the essays was further developed with exemplary or cautionary anecdotes showing the women's point of view of different situations, and the consequences of certain behaviours. Such anecdotes included stories of a young woman who disguised herself as a boy to follow her lover in the army; another, raised in ignorance, who eloped with the first man to court her; and a woman unsatisfied with marriage whose love affair yielded an illegitimate child. Over the run of the journal such stories numbered sixty, some detailed enough to be likened to "miniature novels". Haywood defended the omission of current affairs by pointing out these were adequately represented in the newspapers of the day. However, she also argued the need for women to be educated. She devoted one series of issues to the study of Baconian empiricism and the natural world and thus is said to have fostered women's interest in the microscope. Eliza Haywood (c. 1693 – 25 February 1756), born Elizabeth Fowler, was an English writer, actress and publisher. An increase in interest and recognition of Haywood's literary works began in the 1980s. Described as "prolific even by the standards of a prolific age", Haywood wrote and published over 70 works in her lifetime, including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood today is studied primarily as one of the 18th-century founders of the novel in English. Haywood is notable as a transgressive, outspoken writer of amatory fiction, plays, romance and novels. Paula R. Backscheider claims, "Haywood's place in literary history is equally remarkable and as neglected, misunderstood, and misrepresented as her œuvre" (p. xiii intro drama). For a time, Eliza Haywood was more frequently noted for appearing in Alexander Pope's The Dunciad rather than on her literary merits. Though Alexander Pope centred her in the heroic games of The Dunciad in Book II, she was in his view "vacuous". He does not dismiss her as a woman, but as having nothing of her own to say – for her politics and implicitly for plagiarism. Unlike other "dunces", Pope's verdict does not seem to have caused her subsequent obscurity. Rather it was as literary historians came to praise and value the masculine novel and most importantly dismiss the courtship novel and novels of eroticism that she was upstaged by more chaste or overtly philosophical works. In The Dunciad, booksellers race to reach Eliza, their reward to be all of her books and her company. In Pope's view, she is for sale, in other words, in literature and society. As with other "dunces", she was not without complicity in the attack. Haywood had begun to make it known that she was poor and in need of funds; she seemed to be writing for pay and to please an undiscerning public. In the conclusion to Old Mortality (1816), one of Walter Scott's comic characters references Haywood's Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753) as a model of pathos. Editors suggest the novel had become something of a joke in literary circles by the late 18th century. Eliza Haywood is seen as "a case study in the politics of literary history" (Backscheider, p. 100). She is also being re-evaluated by feminist scholars and rated highly. Interest has burgeoned since the 1980s. Her novels (known to Thomas Jefferson) are seen as stylistically innovative. Her plays and political writing attracted most attention in her own time, and she was a full player in that difficult public sphere. Her novels, voluminous and frequent, are now seen as stylistically innovative and important transitions from the erotic seduction novels and poetry of Aphra Behn, particularly Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684), and the straightforward, plain-spoken novels of Frances Burney. In her own day, her plays and political writing attracted the most comment and attention – she was a full player in the difficult public sphere – but today her novels carry the most interest and demonstrate the most significant innovation.