1600-1754: Lifestyles, Social Trends, and Fashion: Publications

Anonymous, Directorium Cosmeticum, or, A Directory for the Female Sex: Being a Father’s Advice to His Daughter (London: George Larkin, 1684)—a good example of a late-seventeenth-century manual for young ladies. It promises to direct young women on “how they may obtain the greatest beauty and adorn themselves with holy conversation”;

Samuel Clarke, A True and Faithful Account of the Four Chiefest Plantations of the English in America: to wit, of Virginia, New-England, Bermudas, and Barbados (London: Robert Clavel, 1670)—this travel account may not be as true and faithful as it claims, but it does provide a good example of an early visitor’s observations of mid-seventeenth-century colonial life;

George Fisher, The American Instructor, or Young Man’s Best Companion (Philadelphia: B. Franklin &D. Hall, 1748)—a handy guide on how to prosper in a variety of pursuits in colonial British America. It contains guides to spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping, forms of indenture, letters, trades, descriptions of colonies, medicine recipes, and much more;

James Kirkwood, The True Interest of Families, or, Directions How Parents May Be Happy in their Children, and Children in their Parents (London: J. Taylor &J. Everingham, 1692)—throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ministers and gentlemen on both sides of the Atlantic wrote many advice books such as this one on methods of child-rearing;

Andrea Palladio, The Four Books of Andrea Palladio’s Architecture (London: I. Ware, 1738)—this Italian architect lived in the sixteenth century but greatly influenced genteel architecture in eighteenth-century England and America. His influence can be seen in great American houses such as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Madison’s Montpelier;

Eliza Smith, The Compleate Housewife: or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion (Williamsburg, Va.: William Parks, 1742)—a colonial cookbook; it includes recipes, instructions for preserving food, monthly menus, and over two hundred medicinal cures.