ESTC T32742. First edition. In a letter to Cassandra Austen, dated 30 August 1805, Jane Austen writes: ‘I had almost forgot to thank you for your letter. I am glad you recommended 'Gisborne' for having begun, I am pleased with it, and I had quite determined not to read it’. The ‘Gisborne’ referred to is Thomas Gisborne, and the work is most likely, as R.W. Chapman assumes, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex (1797). On the subject of female reading Gisborne says a number of things about women and fiction that either coincide with, or perhaps exerted an influence on, Austen's concept of fiction. In a chapter entitled ‘On the Employment of Time’, Gisborne recommends to ‘every woman, whether single or married, the habit of regularly allotting to improving books a portion of each day’. Significantly, Gisborne does not include novels (a term he used interchangeably with romance) among the improving works women should read. Though he readily acknowledges the popularity of novels/romances, he nevertheless laments that they obtain ‘from a considerable proportion of the female sex a reception much more favourable than is accorded to other kinds of composition more worthy of encouragement’. ref: Uphaus, R.W. Jane Austen and Female Reading. Studies in the Novel, 1987.