Self-dedications

When Mary Villiers executed the genius stroke of dedicating her book to herself in 1679, she was acting contrary to world convention, but not without precedent. Mary Elizabeth Brown in Dedications: An Anthology of Forms... (NY: Putnam, 1913), in her discussion, "Dedications to Oneself," offers several pre-1679 precedents of the self-dedication; e.g., John Marston, Scourge of Villainie (1599) and George Wither, Abuses Stript & Whipt (1622). Self-dedications after 1679, in Brown's anthology, include A Narrative of the Life of Charlotte Charke, Written by Herself (1755) and a play by Voltaire as "Gabriel Grasset," Les Guebres (1769).