How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

Moore, Wendy

ISBN 10: 0465065740 / ISBN 13: 9780465065745

Published by Basic Books, 2013

About this Item

First edition 2013, first printing, numbers line starts with 1. Published by Basic Books. Hardcover with DJ. Condition new, square tight and crisp book, no edgewear, corners not bumped, no markings of any kind, no names, no highlighting, no underlining, no bent page corners, not a reminder. DJ new, bright and shiny, no tears, no chips, no edgewear, price not clipped. 8vo, 343 pages.

Seller Inventory # 003399

Bibliographic Details

• Title: How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465065740
• ISBN 13: 9780465065745
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A captivating tale of one man's mission to groom his ideal mate.

Thomas Day, an 18th-century British writer and radical, knew exactly the sort of woman he wanted to marry. Pure and virginal, yet tough and hardy, and completely subervient to his whims. But after being rejected by a number of spirited young women, Day concluded that the perfect partner he envisioned simply did not exist in frivolous, fashion-obsessed Georgian society. Rather than conceding defeat and giving up on his search for the woman of his dreams, however, Day set out to create her.

So begins the extraordinary true story at the heart of How to Create the Perfect Wife. A few days after he turned twenty-one and inherited a large fortune, Day adopted two young orphans from the Founding Hospital and, guided by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the principles of the Enlightenment, attempted to teach them to be model wives.

Day's peculiar experiment inevitably backfired -- though not before he had taken his theories about marriage, education, and femininity to shocking extremes.

Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism -- and deep contradictions -- at the heart of the enlightenment.

About the Author

Wendy Moore is a journalist and author of several previous books, including How to Create the Perfect Wife and Wedlock, a Sunday Times bestseller. Her writing has appeared in the Times, the Guardian, the Observer, and the Sunday Telegraph. She lives in London.