Difesa dell’ ingegno delle donne e della loro attitudine pel governo, E per le altre cariche pubbliche. Ragionamento Accademico di donna Giuseppa Amar e Borbon Accademica della Real Società Aragonese degli Amici del Paese tradotto dallo spagnuolo dall’ Ab. Gianfranc. Masdeu A richiesta d’un sincero Encomiatore della coltissima Ragionatrice.
Roma: Per Luigi Perego Savioni Stampator Vaticano incontro la fabbrica de S. Agostino, [1789]. First Italian edition. In contemporary green blank wrappers. In fine condition.
Scarce Spanish proto-feminist work in contemporary Italian translation.
Born into a family of physicians on his father's side in 1749, and received an unusual education for a non-aristocratic woman in 18th-century Madrid, Josefa Amar y Borbón learned Latin, Greek, and several modern languages. With her husband moved to Zaragoza and joined the local reformist and Enlightened circles. Translated French, Italian and English texts and published her works, the present one Discurso sobre el talent de las mujeres in 1786 an important contribution to the Enlightenment debate on gender equality and women’s admission to the Sociedades Económicas de Amigos del País (Economic Societies of Friends of the Country; associations of the Enlightenment period to stimulate the economic and intellectual development of Spain) published originally in the periodical Memorial literario, and later Discurso sobre la educación física y moral de las mujeres (1790), a comprehensive pedagogical treatise on women’s education in eighteenth-century Spain. Josefa was admitted to the Real Sociedad Económica of Aragón (1782) and Madrid (1787), the Junta de Damas de Honor y Mérito (royal Spanish philanthropic organization), and the Royal Medical Society of Barcelona, in recognition for her contribution to the popularization of medical knowledge. (Bolufer, 2013)
Scarce, WorldCat locates only 2 copies (Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome; Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen).
Literature: Bolufer M. (2013). Josefa Amar y Borbón, Spanish writer, scholar and translator, 1749–1833? Women Writers. Retrieved September 6, 2022, from http://www.womenwriters.nl/index.php/Josefa_Amar_y_Borbón.
Price: €4,000.00