As a _genre_ work the book is not unique; rather is it typical. The gradual social settlement after the Civil War, destined to develop into stagnation under the first Georges, caused didactic works, guides to manners, housewifery and sport, society handbooks, to proliferate. _The Ten Pleasures_ mentions some standard works, which every good housewife would probably possess--Nicholas Culpepper's medical handbooks, for instance, and _The Complete Cook_, which indeed, as part of _The Queen's Closet Opened_, had reappeared in its natal year 1682-1683. The same year saw the birth of such works as _The Complete Courtier_, _The Complete Compting House_, _The Gentleman Jockey_, _The Accomplished Ladies' Delight._ Life was being scheduled, tabulated, in readiness for the complacent century about to open. It was also being explored, not only in such works as _The Ten Pleasures_ and _The Woman's Advocate_, but in others (entered as published, but in many cases not known to be now extant) like _The Wonders of the Female World_, _The Swaggering Damsel_, or _Several New Curtain Lectures_, and _Venus in ye smoake, or, the nunn in her smock, in curious dialogues addressed to the lady abbesse of love's parradice_--all produced in that same _annus mirabilis_ of outspoken domesticity. _The Ten Pleasures_, apart from its intrinsic interest, is exceptionally important from a book-collector's point of view. It is of the utmost rarity. There is no copy in the British Museum and none in the Cambridge University Library. In fact, there are only two copies known of the whole work--one in the Bodleian (wanting one plate), and that from which the present text is taken. The Huth Collection had a copy of the first part only. Both the fuller copies contain the second part--_The Confession_--and evidently the two parts, though they have separate title pages, and were published at different times, were intended to form a complete work. Who wrote the book? "A. Marsh, Typogr. [apher]," says the title page. A. Marsh cannot be traced, nor is the work included in the Stationers' Registers for the period. It may be that Marsh thought it too licentious for registration (an improbable supposition), and so, as Hazlitt suggests, printed it abroad.