The Old Man's Head: Or, Youthful Recollections. With Copper Plates

London: William Darton..., no date, [1824]. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 12mo (in 6s), 138 x 85 mms, pp. 180 [181 engraved advert for Dalton imprints, 182 blank], engraved frontispiece and two other engraved plates, contemporary quarter plum roan, marbled boards (worn and soiled), gilt spine; text fingered, extremities worn; with the inscription "Mary Gregson - 1830" on the recto of the front free end-paper. Esther Beuzeville (1786 - 1851) married Philip Hewlett (1780 - 1820) in 1809, and after his death remarried in 1827, this time to William Copley (1790 - 1857), a Baptist minister who was ten years her junior. One of her earliest works was Cottage Comforts, which made her reputation, and, as ONDB records, "Although it opened with a sententious section on the virtues essential to domestic comfort, Cottage Comforts was full of practical advice (the author had tried out her own recipes) and was forthright on such subjects as childbirth and constipation." ONDB gives a date of 1823 for the publication of this work, but the engraved plates are dated 1824. Lines in verse break up the narrative. This appears to be one of her less common works, with copies located in BL, Bodleian, Victoria, and Albert on this side of the pond and at Florida, Penn, Princeton, and UCLA in north America.