Mary Astell

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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.
Title-page of Mary Astell's "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of their true and greatest Interest", part 1, third revised edition, dated 1696, published as "By a Lover of Her Sex".

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Reception Hildegarde of Bingen
In recent times she has made a rapid transition from being unknown to being fashionable for her music and moderately well known for her writings. Her letters were edited in English translation in 1994 and...
Reception Elizabeth Elstob
When George Ballard met Elstob years later she must have mentioned this unfinished project, for he was soon questioning her about Margaret Roper and Mary Astell .
Perry, Ruth, and George Ballard. “Introduction”. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, Wayne State University Press, pp. 12-48.
25
Reception Bathsua Makin
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...
Residence Jane Loudon
It is not clear when Jane Webb moved from the Birmingham area to live in London, at at 21 Norton Street, off Great Portland Street. But in view of her years of writing for...
Textual Features Helena Wells
The body of her work takes up her favourite topic: the difficulties of women as wage-earners—difficulties which impede the progress of my own sex to independence—and what should be done to solve them...
Textual Features Jane Harvey
In addition to quotation from Milton , Pope , and Thomson , this book has a Sterne an flavour, with passages titled from sights (like The Theatre Royal and The Merchants's Court) alternating with...
Textual Features Charlotte Yonge
Her vindication of unmarried women drawing intellectual and social authority from their relationship with the Church of England brings to mind Mary Astell . She appears to have learned from women writers like Sarah Trimmer
Textual Features Mary Whateley Darwall
The volume's heavy concentration on pastoral may be due to MWD 's deference to her mentors, though pastoral conventions seem often to have beem apt to her feelings. The farewell poem An Elegy on Leaving...
Textual Features Mary Hays
Among the book's contents are poems and fiction (including dream visions and an Oriental tale. Titles like Cleora, or the Misery Attending Unsuitable Connections and Josepha, or pernicious Effects of early Indulgence foreground Hays's didactic...
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

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