Elizabeth Cook's Common Place Book. Rahway 6th mo. 12th 1805.

Rahway, [New Jersey], 1805–1824. 8vo (8” x 6.25”), full brown leather. 165 pp. of manuscript on 83 leaves. Ownership inscriptions on title-page. CONDITION: Covers and cover-page detached, dampstaining to title-page and edge of pages, 2.5” tear to page 1, light chipping and light staining to pages.

An unusual commonplace book kept by a New Jersey woman and member of a proto-feminist "Chaponeon Society" in Perth Amboy, the formation of which was inspired by the life and works of English author Hester Chapone. Entries include Cook’s “addresses” to the Society, poetry by Society members and others, etc.

The key entry here, entitled, “Duties of the Chaponeon Society” (dated 1810), serves as evidence of the existence of the Society and Cook’s commitment to its purposes:

As the Chaponeon Society has been established by mutual consent, and as we, the members, have Ms. Chapone’s letters for our fundamental principles we aught not in the least degree to swerve from the path of our duty; but be constant, and careful to employ the golden opportunity of improvement. […] Feeling it my indispensable duty to acquiesce with the rules of the society, I am fully resolved to attend like a faithful subject to them.

The mention of “Ms. Chapone’s letters” is almost certainly a reference to her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind: Addressed to a Young Lady (published anonymously in 1773). Another expressly “Chaponeon” entry is “An Address to Winter by the Young Ladies of the Chaponeon Society in the city of Perth Amboy.” Additional entries, authored by both Cook and others, include poetry and prose under such titles: “Friendship addressed to Mira”; “A Mothers Soliloquy over her dying infant”; “The Distressed Mother”; “Winters Walk” (attributed to a “Dr. Johnston”); “Joseph a type of Jesus”; “The Souls, Welcome to God”; “To Miranda”; “Ode for May”; “In the Oratorio of Abel”; “The Farmers Prayer”; “Mercy”; “Indolence”; “Sincerity” and so on. Many of these entries take on greater significance when considered as expressions of the Chaponeon Society’s aims for female education.

Also included here are memorial texts such as “Contemporary verses on the death of Joseph P. Waln of Philadelphia aged about 10 years…1783”; “On the Death of Susanna James Youngest Daughter of Abel and Rebecca James of Philadelphia who departed this life…1774 in the 13th year of her age”; “An Epitaph On William Cook, who died on the 25th of Sept. 1795, aged 8 years”; “The Farewell to Rachel Wilson,” and “the Death of the unfortunate Mary Blandry [1720–1752] who was executed for poisoning her father.” Entries on more contemporary deaths include: “Verses over the grave of my beloved friend Ms. Margaretta Manning” (dated 30 May 1818 at Bay Mahant, Guadeloupe, France); “An Elegy on the Death of Miss. L. Barlow” (attributed to Rev. Gilbert Hunt Sayres), and “Lines on the Death of Miss Isabella Edgar who departed this life Sept. 22 1821.” Several entries of a religious nature are signed by Eliza M. Edgar, presumably the sister of the late Isabella Edgar.

Hester Chapone (1727–1801) defied England’s social standards by advocating for a woman's right to a robust education. A member of the Bluestocking Circle, which included linguist Elizabeth Carter, author Mary Wollstonecraft, and social reformer Elizabeth Montagu, Chapone was first published in a 1750 issue of Samuel Johnson's The Rambler. However, it was her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind that made her famous, the work becoming an influential handbook on female comportment and education.

An unusual manuscript reflecting the influence of Heater Chapone on American women in the early nineteenth century.

REFERENCES: Drabble, Margaret, Editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature, fifth edition (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 185; “Chapone, Hester” at encyclopedia.com