Author: CONSTANT, l'abbe [Alphonse; later to be Eliphas Levi].
Title: Doctrines religieuses et sociales.
Description: Paris, Le Gallois 1841. 12mo later marbled boards (a bit rubbed). Some minor signs of use, light pencilling, a bit of browning. Very acceptable. ¶ First (only?) edition. Don't be fooled, this may be dressed in a Christian cassock - Constant never reached the rank of abbe in the church - but it is dangerous radical, socialist, heretical stuff. I think this is his third book, coming between his Bible de Liberte (for which he was arrested) and Assomption de la Femme and the emancipation of women is a chapter here. I'm not sure any modern feminist would be happy with his view of women but he was trying hard. As he had to, being one of the inner circle of devotees of Flora Tristan. He published her 'l'Emancipation de la Femme, ou le Testament de la Paria' in 1846, two years after her death. He drifted into magic in the 1850s after an action packed but disappointing decade for revolutionaries. And like many mystics and magicians, Constant/Levi seems to have published more after his death than he did alive.

Keywords: social sciences political economy economics socialism religion utopias feminism c19th France occult reform