Historic Tassie cameo mourning ring for James Fordyce inscribed ‘Rev’d James Fordyce DD Ob.1st Oct.1796 aet 76’
High carat gold and pale blue glass Tassie cameo with facetted French jet border.
Size 9.78. Cameo 2.2 by 2.6cms.
Fordyce was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and poet. He is best known for his collection of sermons published in 1766 as Sermons for Young Women, popularly known as Fordyce's Sermons.
Mary Wollstonecraft scathingly attacks his sermons in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Jane Austen would have been only too familiar with c18th conduct books for women and she slyly mocked some of his ideas in Pride and Prejudice. In chapter 14 when Mr. Collins is invited to “read aloud to the ladies,” he chooses to read from Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women. Lydia,interrupts him after only three ponderous pages.
However Fordyce’s influence on c18th culture can not underestimated and he was much admired by both David Garrick and Samuel Johnson.
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