HERALDRY FOR LADIES. 8vo. [17.7 x 10.6 cm]. viii pp, 169 pp, (3), with hundreds of wood-engraved armorials in text. Bound in contemporary sheep. Spine a little chipped; one signature sitting a little proudly; otherwise very good. A very neatly-printed production on strong paper. Extremely rare sole edition of this educational guide to heraldry by Harriet Dallaway, who dedicates the work to her friend “Miss Henrietta Howard Molyneux” (1804-1876) – then 23 years of age and unmarried. Dallaway’s work must rank among the earliest efforts to promote heraldry – an artistic science principally concerned with patriarchal genealogies – as belonging among the legitimate pursuits of a female education. Dallaway’s dedication notes that this “slight essay” was compiled at the request of Miss Molyneux, “and intended to facilitate the study of heraldry, in its invention, history, and practice”. We have traced a contemporary review in The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1828 (Vol 98, p. 159), which affirms the work’s intended audience as female, noting that it “has been privately printed by Mrs. Dallaway, wife to the accomplished Secretary of the Heralds’ College… and is a well compiled treatise, elegantly embellished, and particularly adapted for those of the fair sex who engage in that delightful study…”. The suggestion that the work was ‘privately printed’ hints at the idea that Mrs. Dallaway may have used the book for private tutoring. She begins each section with a brief discursive introduction (“heraldry continues to speak in the rugged accents of the early Norman-French…” etc.). and extends her scope to helmets, “Leaves and Flowers”, “Figures introduced during the Crusades”, and “Legendary Animals”. Her final chapter, “Practical Hints for the Study of Heraldry” further affirms her target audience (“This little essay is intended chiefly for the use of my own sex, or amateurs of heraldry, who may have a taste for such pursuits…”) and suggests that each of her readers should color in the blazons as she sees fit; “by these means each lady would have a copy of this book different from all the rest, as it is scarcely possible that two individuals should apply the same colours, without taking them from each other”. Harriet Anne Jeffries (d. 1867) married James Dallaway (1763-1834) in 1800, with whom she evidently shared many of the same interests. The DNB tells us that James was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1789 and had earlier published his own Inquiries into the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England, with Explanatory Observations on Armorial Ensigns in 1793. * Lowndes II, 582.