A very rare work not seen at auction now for nearly 30 years! And this an excellent set.

As with many of the workers for female rights and the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, for Lydia Maria Child, the two issues were connected. The plight of the black man, woman, and child was connected to the plight of the white woman, and women in general. For Child, the universality of both slavery and female subjugation simply proved that radical action was necessary for the resistance of both. The final tail woodcut in volume one conjoins the two ideas by depicting a near-nude female slave and her son working in the field. 

Though she published on women's rights and the plight of women concurrently with her abolitionist activities, she believed that the work of abolition should be approached first, since it was the more morally bankrupt of the two. 

The present work is one apologetic block in her larger thought structure, establishing that women in all ages, with few notable exceptions, have faced the same issues. This common history and experience should then, in her mind, be leveraged to lead to large scale action.

It is also one of the earliest significant works toward the equality of women, being published before the Seneca Falls Convention, which would launch the women's suffrage movement.

The present work ranges extensively both in terms of history and geography; Afghanistan, modern and ancient Africa, the Amazons [fascinating], Arabia, Bali, Burmah, Borneo, China, Korea [Corea], Courdistan, India, the Jews, New Guinea, the Moors, Siam, Siberia, Thibet [Tibet], Van Diemen's Land, in the Northern and Southern States of America, among Native Americans, in Greenland, in Slave Countries, the Witch Trials as an Attack on Women, Widows, Anti-Female Literature, etc., 

There are no other copies on the market at the time of cataloguing and it has not appeared at auction for going on 30 years. 

Child, Lydia Maria. Brief History of the Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations. Fifth Edition. Revised and Corrected. In Two Volumes. New York and Boston. C. S. Francis and Company. 1854. 298 + 298pp.

Good + copies in a very tight, clean, and crisp state of preservation textually. Original cloth faded and bearing period, probably 19th century, ex library labels. Interior also bearing labels and stamps as shown. Very solid and clean and quite attractive with their period paper ephemera from the Bigelow Free Public Library.