Cartas sobre la educación del bello sexo por una señora americana (1824) was one of many educational texts produced in London for export to the Spanish American republics by the Anglo-German publisher Rudolph Ackermann, using the printer Charles Wood. An anonymous conduct book for women in epistolary form, Cartas was written to educate the girls and women of independent Spanish America. It was particularly targeted at a Buenos Aires readership and bore a dedication to the city's women's organisation the Sociedad de Beneficencia (described in Chapter 1). Documents relating to the Society were reproduced in the text's appendix and copies of the text were ordered by Rivadavia himself and shipped to the organisation; it was later reprinted in Buenos Aires. Through its association with Rivadavia and the Society, Cartas can be seen as an official state-approved textbook deemed to be suitable for the liberal project to guide the Buenos Aires population away from what were regarded as backward-looking Spanish customs and ignorance. Aimed at women, the text explains the female population’s special responsibility in establishing social order and progress in the new republics.

This chapter will begin with a discussion of the possible authorship of the text and explain the aims of the Ackermann publishing business in Spanish America. This will be followed by a discussion of conduct literature and a close reading of Cartas. The book expressed a positive view of women’s domestic role in society, and argued that emulation of the English model of education for girls was one of the most effective ways to modernise and improve post-independence Spanish America.

Authorship of Cartas

Although signed by ‘una señora americana’, an anonym which denotes a Spanish American married woman of seniority and social standing, there is no evidence to suggest the real existence of this persona. This purported authorship is likely, therefore, to be a literary conceit in the same fictional vein as its letter format and should not be readily accepted as a historical fact. Cartas belongs to a highly imitative and unoriginal genre and the real author might well have been a man adopting a popular framework and identity.