Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
Frances Teague
noted that by the 1990s most readers were finding the Essay (which is now rare) overcautious.
Teague, Frances. Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning. Bucknell University Press.
95
Yet in 1992 a copy of it was offered for sale at £3,500, while Astell
Reception
Anne Conway
Two of AC
's most recent editors, Coudert
and Corse
, more forcefully assert that hers is the most interesting and original philosophical treatise written by a woman in the seventeenth century
Conway, Anne. “Introduction”. The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, edited by Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse, Cambridge University Press, p. vii - xxxiii.
xxix
and that...
Publishing
Elizabeth Elstob
Its full title is An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory
, Anciently used in the English-Saxon Church. Giving an Account of the Conversion of the English from Paganism to Christianity. It...
Author summary
Fidelia
This symbolic name indicating faithfulness (which was also adopted for themselves by Mary Astell
, Jane Barker
, and the American writers Sarah Gill
, Hannah Griffitts
and Sukey Vickery
, as well as for...
politics
Sarah Scott
They believed that women could think and write in freedom only outside relationships with men. Although Mary Astell
's writing influenced them, they insisted that women must be involved in society and not withdraw into...
politics
Harriet Martineau
HM
revelled in her single state and proclaimed herself probably the happiest single woman in England.
Martineau, Harriet, and Gaby Weiner. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography. Virago.
1: 133
In keeping with the general interest among earlier Victorian feminists in the potential of sisterhoods, an article...
Occupation
William Law
On her husband's death, Elizabeth Hutcheson
, former friend of Mary Astell
, moved with Hester Gibbon
to join WL
in philosophic retirement at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire, where they became local benefactors.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Literary Setting
Sarah Butler
Butler makes of this history a novel ostensibly in ten parts, though the plot continues through them as a single sustained narrative. They are titled The Captivated Monarch, The Banish'd Prince (both titles to...
Literary responses
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The praise by Astell
, and by an anonymous poet who also attached a compliment to the manuscript, shows a recognition that this was a landmark text in women's writing. A considerable critical literature has...
Literary responses
Delarivier Manley
By linking her with Astell
(as author of Bart'lemy Fair) he made it clear that the issue was her gender at least as much as her politics. She, meanwhile, maintained that she produced the...
Literary responses
Catharine Trotter
Nineteenth-century literary historians—Charles Dibdin
, John Doran
, Jane Williams
—tended, though from different viewpoints, to subordinate her writings to her supposed personal characteristics.
Clark, Constance. Three Augustan Women Playwrights. Peter Lang.
63
More disappointingly, a feminist literary historian of the early...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah, Lady Cowper
The diary's first volume opens with a preface which expresses conventional modesty bluntly, without the customary effort at elegance or grace: Books generally begin with a Preface which draws in the Reader to go on...
Intertextuality and Influence
Judith Drake
Her remark that English women are born slaves,
Drake, Judith. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. A. Roper, E. Wilkinson, and R. Clavel, http://U of A, Special Collections.
22
like black plantation labourers, may have given the phrase to Mary Astell
, whose use of it is famous.
Intertextuality and Influence
May Drummond
Thomas Story
said that at the beginning of her preaching career MD
had a Turn of Expression . . . very taking to most Hearers, especially the more polite sort of both Sexes,
Story, Thomas.
720
and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Queen Elizabeth I
The immense and long-lasting interest aroused by Elizabeth is not, of course, primarily due to her writings, any more than were the adulation paid her during her lifetime, the cult of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen...
