ABSTRACT
In the contemporary press, conduct books published by male authors did not receive as extensive a reception as those authored by their female counterparts, but their more modest showing does not make the reactions that they elicited any less revealing. Graillard's L'Ami des filles was announced by the Mercure de France as a new publication but was not reviewed in any of the journal's subsequent issues. Although the divergences in ideological orientations colored the tone of the comments that these periodicals provided, they did not affect the fundamental stance toward Graillard's work. The publication of Reyre's Ecole des jeunes demoiselles did not trigger much of a reaction in the periodicals familiar to us that were still circulating in the 1780s. The only echo it received was in Les Affiches de province, which merely commented on its second edition published in 1786 with the complete mother-daughter correspondence in two rather succinct pieces.
