Mary Astell

-
Standard Name: Astell, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Astell
Pseudonym: A Lover of Her Sex
Pseudonym: The Author of the Proposal to the Ladies
Pseudonym: The Reflector
Pseudonym: Tom Single
Pseudonym: A very Moderate Person and Dutiful Subject of the Queen
Pseudonym: A Daughter of the Church of England
Pseudonym: Mr Wotton
Best known as a feminist theorist and polemicist, MA is also a fine poet and an energetic and funny controversialist on the political affairs of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. A High Anglican and High Tory in politics, she was nevertheless outspokenly radical about matters concerning gender. Her regular publisher, Rich or Richard Wilkin , was known for his piety.

Connections

Connections Sort ascending Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Matilda Betham
MMB also has strong coverage of writers, scholars, and activists, like Anne Askew , Mary Astell (whose uncle she credits with having generously tutored her), and Ann Bacon . She seems to have excluded the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Susanna Haswell Rowson
Rowson's Outline of Universal History includes a defence of history as a study for young women. It is, she writes, only some persons of the opposite sex who fail to realise that history is the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
Textual Production Judith Drake
In the late 1990s, a bookshop offered for sale a two-leaf poem which seems to come from a longer work entitled To the Most Ingenious Mrs. — . . . Defence of Her Sex...
Textual Production Jane Lead
The Theosophical Transactions attracted much attention to JL 's existing and forthcoming publications as well as to her ideas and her circle. It also included excerpts of work by others, including Mary Astell . It...
Textual Production Anne Finch
AF wrote a religious poem for the occasion, addressed to her friend Lady Catherine Jones (who was also a friend of Mary Astell ).
Finch, Anne. The Anne Finch Wellesley Manuscript Poems: A Critical Edition. Editors McGovern, Barbara and Charles H. Hinnant, University of Georgia Press.
126ff
Textual Production Damaris Masham
The attribution to her in some quarters of Astell 's Serious Proposal (published in July 1694 as by a Lover of her Sex) may have made DM wish to distance herself from Astell. Here...
Textual Production Damaris Masham
Boyer made the ascription in the 1705 volume of his annual series The History of the Reign of Queen Anne.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Masham claimed in her preface to have written this work (during leisure Hours)...
Textual Production Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
LMWM and Mary Astell wrote, on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper, polemical poems on the death of the fourteen-year-old bride Eleanor Bowes (née Verney ), denouncing the institution of marriage.
Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Clarendon.
240-1
Textual Production Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
She altered or misremembered the date she gave the final letter in her book; the corresponding actual letter could not have been written on that day. Mary Astell added her feminist paratext, in prose and...
Textual Features Sophia Lee
An Advertisement claims that The Recess is a version, in modernised English, of a manuscript memoir from the reign of Elizabeth I . It breaks new ground for the English novel in various ways: it...
Textual Features Clara Reeve
This is an extension of The School for Widows: it argues for reform (including improved education for women) as a preventative for revolution. Its ideas, however, may sound reactionary, and its version of gender-roles...
Textual Features Mrs Ross
Among a large cast, Mrs Charlton (who has a protegee, the daughter of her early love, who is intensely but secretly unhappy) and Mrs Finch are old maids and glad to be so. Althea (youngest...
Textual Features Elizabeth Elstob
EE 's preliminary list of names suggests considerable research work: it includes several ancient or Anglo-Saxon women as well as Mary Astell , Anne Bacon , Katherine Chidley (as the pamphlet antagonist of Thomas Edwards
Textual Features Sarah Chapone
SC used letters to introduce John Wesley to the works of Mary Astell —just as, later, she used letters to raise the consciousness of George Ballard .

Timeline

1628: Publication began of the legal treatise known...

Building item

1628

Publication began of the legal treatise known to later generations as Coke upon Littleton: The first part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England, or a Commentarie upon Littleton by jurist Sir Edward Coke .

1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...

Writing climate item

1656

Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.

1670: Les Pensées de M. Pascal sur la réligion,...

Writing climate item

1670

Les Pensées de M. Pascal sur la réligion, et sur quelques autres sujets was posthumously published: it takes the form of a collection of aphorisms and very brief essays.

1680: Josiah Priest and his wife moved their girls'...

Building item

1680

Josiah Priest and his wife moved their girls' boarding school from Leicester Fields in London to Chelsea, where they took over an existing school in Gorges House.

1 April 1684: George Hickes (later a patron of Elizabeth...

Building item

1 April 1684

George Hickes (later a patron of Elizabeth Elstob ) preached at St Bridget's Church in London a sermon on almsgiving which made particular mention of charities to benefit women, including schools and colleges along the...

January 1697: Daniel Defoe proposed in his early publication...

Building item

January 1697

Daniel Defoe proposed in his early publication An Essay upon Projects (advertised for sale this month) the founding of an academy for women.

1697: John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A...

Women writers item

1697

John Evelyn included in his Numismata. A Discourse of Medals, Ancient and Modern a list of women famed for writing: Margaret Cavendish , Katherine Philips , Aphra Behn , Bathsua Makin , and Mary Astell .

1707: George Hickes published, as Instructions...

Building item

1707

George Hickes published, as Instructions for the Education of a Daughter, a translation of Fénelon 's Traité de l'éducation des filles, 1687.

Before 21 October 1714: George Berkeley compiled and published The...

Writing climate item

Before 21 October 1714

George Berkeley compiled and published The Ladies Library, as by a Lady.

June 1816: Lady Isabella King opened at Bailbrook House...

Building item

June 1816

Lady Isabella King opened at Bailbrook House near Bath a communal home for single gentlewomen (or Protestant nunnery): a project going back to Mary Astell , which King picked up from Sarah Scott 's Millenium Hall.

Texts

Astell, Mary. A Fair Way with the Dissenters. Richard Wilkin, 1704.
Astell, Mary. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Richard Wilkin, 1694.
Astell, Mary. A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II. Richard Wilkin, 1697.
Astell, Mary. An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War in this Kingdom. Richard Wilkin, 1704.
Astell, Mary. Bart’lemy Fair. Richard Wilkin, 1709.
Astell, Mary. “Introduction”. The First English Feminist, edited by Bridget Hill, St Martin’s Press, 1986, pp. 1-62.
Norris, John, and Mary Astell. Letters Concerning the Love of God. S. Manship and Richard Wilkin, 1695.
Astell, Mary. Moderation Truly Stated. Richard Wilkin, 1704.
Astell, Mary. Reflections Upon Marriage. John Nutt, 1700.
Astell, Mary. The Christian Religion. Richard Wilkin, 1705.
Astell, Mary. The First English Feminist. Editor Hill, Bridget, St Martin’s Press, 1986.