THE POLITE PRECEPTOR; or, improving Moralist. Consisting of a choice collection of relations, visions, allegories, and moral essays. Selected from the most eminent English authors. Compiled at the request of a noble lady, and designed for the use of Schools.

FIRST EDITION. 12mo, pp. [4], viii, [4], 247; with the contemporary ownership signature of one "Ann Boult" on half-title and title-pages; full contemporary blind-ruled calf, rubbed and worn with spine ends chipped away and corners showing; the spine in six compartments with raised bands, the leather flaking; the joints and hinges cracked and tender, with boards holding by threads only; lacking free endpapers but pages are generally clean and all text is legible.


Several anthologies of the late eighteenth century explicitly state that they are for use in schools, but in style, and sometimes in content, they are chiefly derived from the tradition of home reading. Because authors and publishers were deliberately aiming at both of these markets it was natural that anthologies of selected works were produced that could be put to use in both categories of learning and reading. The present example is one of the earliest to be published where 'School' is specifically mentioned on the title. Issued by Richard Snagg this type of work was just the sort of publication he would stock at his 'Little Book Warehouse', dealing in chiefly in children's books.

The introduction makes clear that The Polite Preceptor was a safe text to place in the hands of impressionable young minds: 'Novels and Romances, though many of them contain some few good morals, are not worth picking out of the rubbish intermixed; 'tis like searching for a few small diamonds, amongst mountains of dirt, which, when found, are too in considerable to reward the search. The best of these kind of writings, to say no worse, is little better than loss of time to peruse; but some of them are attended with the most pernicious consequences. By drawing characters which never exist in life, by representing persons and things in a false and extravagant light, and by a series of improbable causes bringing on impossible events, they are apt to give a romantick turn to the mind, that is often productive of great errors in judgment, and fatal mistakes of conduct.' The 'Noble Lady' further suggests that 'The following sheets are calculated to amuse at the same time that they instruct: and as the greatest pains have been taken to render vice odious, and to set off its amiable contrast, virtue, in the most striking light, the editor flatters herself that the labours of a pen (never more pleasingly employed than in the service of the public) will be received by them with the approving smiles of candour and approbation.' [Introduction].

The forty extracts, all chiefly having some moral undertone, of tales, essays, and poems for the young, are gathered from some of the leading journals of the time, including The Spectator, The Guardian, and The Universal Magazine. There is some argument for thinking that the book was aimed more towards girls than boys with the inclusion of several extracts from The Lady's Magazine, Female Spectator and the Oeconomy of of Female Life, and furthermore the present copy being owned by a young lady, certainly adds to the weight of evidence.

OCLC records one copy only, at Pennsylvania; with ESTC adding copies at the British Library, Oxford, Cambridge, The National Trust and Queen's University, Ontario.