Early female ownership inscription. An anonymous courtesy book usually attributed to the Royalist divine Richard Allestree (d.1681), although some speculate that the work was by the learned laywoman Lady Dorothy Pakington, whose private prayers composed during the Civil War and interregnum survive in Bodleian Oxford MS Add. B.58. The author of the dedicatory epistle, Dr Henry Hammond, had been chaplain to Charles I and was a guest of the Pakingtons following the regicide until his own death in 1660.

Printed at the time of the Restoration of the Monarchy, The Gentlemans Calling offers its readers 'Religious and Prudent Instruction' (Epistle) in moral and philosophical matters, taking inspiration from the earlier The Whole Duty of Man (1657). With a lovely early female ownership inscription and later associated presentation inscription dated 1688.

The scarcer of two editions published in the same year, ESTC lists only eight copies in UK institutional holdings.

First edition; small 8vo (16 x 10.5 cm); engraved title and frontis, 2 further engraved full-page plates, woodcut initials and headpiece, ownership and presentation inscriptions and pen-trials to reverse of engraved frontispiece, inscribed 'learn to be true' and pen-trials to back free endpapers, lacking A2 as issued(?), marbled pastedowns; gilt-ruled morocco, all edges gilt; [2] engraved titles, A, a3-b8, [2] plates, B-M8.

ESTC R8983; Wing A1116.