Marriage Rites, Customs and Ceremonies of the Nations of the Universe

Hardcover. Explore matrimonial traditions both ancient and modern across nearly every continent in this early 19th century study by Lady Marianna Augusta Hamilton (1805-1892), who here examines not only marriage customs, but their meaning for the legal status of women. As the wife of Sir James John Hamilton, Baronet (1802-1876), Lady Augusta Hamilton may well have traveled with her husband during his ample and active military service, but for this study she also "collected from the labors of enlightened travelers and navigators," as she writes in her preface, including Lady Mary Wortley Montague in Turkey and Lewis and Clark in North America. This 1824 printing comes illustrated in a copperplate engraved frontispiece of the "Spanish Custom of Serenading" and a title page vignette of a "Marriage Ceremony in Mexico"-extra-illustrated with an 1877 newspaper comic depicting an elderly couple at the altar by Sir John Gilbert and the text "Never too late to mend," pasted in by a previous owner, who also added the author's name in newspaper clippings to the anonymous title page and merely initialed preface, as well as occasional hand-annotations to the text, including a couple of quotes from other works such as John Lubbock's Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man (1867). This is a presentable 1824 edition of a fascinating proto-feminist tour of the world through marriage ceremonies, with clues to its reception left by a later 19th century reader. Geographical subjects include: Turkey, Greece, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain, Greenland and Iceland, Persia, Armenia, Thailand, India, Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Tartary, Arabia, Sumatra, Sri Lanka, Java, the Mariana Islands, Indonesia, Borneo, the Philippines, Japan, Venezuela, the indigenous Tlaxcaltec people of Mexico, the Caribbean, California, Guyana, Brazil, Paraguay, El Salvador, the South Seas, and more. 8 5/8" X 5 1/4". viii, 400pp. Presents nicely in protective archival jacket. Halfbound in calfskin, decoratively gilt-stamped to spine and lettered in gilt over a red leather title label, with marbled paper over boards and matching marbled edges. Rather heavy wear to binding, with hard rubbing and ringstains to boards, corners bumped and split, with boards exposed, chipping to head and tial of spine, and wear to exterior hinges. Inner hinges cracked at gutters of endpapers; binding remains quite firm and sound and text block strong. Armorial bookplate of G. A. Hardy with motto "Fear one" to front pastedown. Stain to top margin of frontispiece and title page. Light scattered foxing and creasing to pages throughout. Occasional pencilled and inked annotations to pages, with newspaper clippings of "Lady Augusta Hamilton" pasted into anonymous title page and to her initials at end of preface, along with a relevant newspaper clipping from 1877 pasted in to rear flyleaf.…