Rare. ESTC records copies of the first edition at BL and Trinity College Dublin; Lilly Library, Illinois, Minnesota and Yale. The second edition (presumably published in the same year) is recorded at BL and Bodley only. The present copy is unusual in that it consists of the sheets of the second edition with the title-page of the first edition. Aside from the present copy the last copy of either edition of this work recorded on Rare Book Hub was at Sothebys in 1964.
A curious and at times vicious diatribe warning young men not to marry older women. The anonymous author claims to speak from personal knowledge after passing over a younger woman to marry a widow, an act which he clearly regretted and details in this work.
The author begins by stating bluntly:
“I have myself been married to an Old Woman, and what is yet worse, a Widow; but, I thank God, my wife died a few weeks ago…”
The book is shockingly frank - and seemingly written from personal experience - but a useful source of information for how women (and especially older women) were viewed in this period. The anonymous author (described on the title-page as “a True Penitent” and later in the work describes how in his early life he was an apprentice to “one of his majesty’s apothecaries” p.24) discusses the (supposedly dangerous) appeal of wealthy widows warning,
“He that marries meerly for the sake of money, or any convenience of tat sort, cannot properly be said to have married a wife, but a bag of money…” (p.11)
He goes on to describe widows as “a second-hand commodity” because they have had sexual relations with their first husband, remarking,
“…it would be highly absurd for any one to set so great a value upon any second-hand piece of household furniture, as he would if it were new; because he knows not how it may have been used, nor what secret cracks, flaws, or stains, it may have received from the carelessness and ill usage of the former possessor” (p.13)
There is also discussion of the disparity of sexual desire between young men and older women:
“My wife, tho’ sixty-five years old, still preserved a lusty, warm, and vigorous constitution, and had not the least aversion to the pleasures of youth. But as for me, my habit of body was weakly and cold, and the fretting and vexation which I daily endured, from the termagant behaviour of my wife, had worm me to a skeleton. Hence it naturally followed, that I did not give unto such conjugal excess, as some married folks, who are better matched, possibly; and, as it seems, my amiable consort wished I should” (p.26)
A response to this book by Thomas Dilworth was published in the same year as An advocate for the ladies…in answer to a late, but scandalous pamphlet, intitled, The folly, sin, and danger, of marrying widows and old women in general. There was also another response, “By a Lady”, titled The characters of the widows, and old women in general, vindicated; being a proper answer to a malicious and scurrillous pamphlet, intituled, The folly, sin, and danger of marrying widows, and old women in general (?1746).
[Bound with]: A Dialogue between King Richard III. And his Adopted Son Richard IV. First London Edition. 8vo. 30pp. A little browned and dusty in places. London: Re-printed for John Warner, 1744. Rare. ESTC records London School of Economics, National Library of Scotland; Harvard and Yale. The Dublin edition (seemingly printed the year before) is recorded at BL and University of Missouri.
Provenance: Part of a group lot sold in a country auction in 2023 to a UK bookseller with this title later sold to Maggs.
