Mary Astell

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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.
  • BirthName: Mary Astell
  • Pseudonyms: A Lover of Her Sex; The Author of the Proposal to the Ladies; The Reflector
    She refers to herself thus in Reflections Upon Marriage.
    ; Tom Single; A very Moderate Person and Dutiful Subject of the Queen; A Daughter of the Church of England ; Mr Wotton
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".

Milestones

12 November 1666

MA was born in Newcastle, the eldest of her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press, 1986.
29, 39

18 March 1683

The sixteen-year-old MA , still living at home in Newcastle, wrote the earliest-dated of her Pindaric odes, entitled Enemies.
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press, 1986.
403-4

16 July 1694

MA 's first book was licensed for print: A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, by a Lover of Her Sex.
Norton, J. E. “Some Uncollected Authors, XXVII: Mary Astell, 1666-1731”. The Book Collector, Vol.
10
, 1961, pp. 58-65.
61

November 1700

MA anonymously published Some Reflections Upon Marriage, Occasion'd by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine 's Case; this has become the best-known of her works.
Norton, J. E. “Some Uncollected Authors, XXVII: Mary Astell, 1666-1731”. The Book Collector, Vol.
10
, 1961, pp. 58-65.
63

July 1706

A third edition of MA 's Reflections Upon Marriage dropped Some from the title and added most of her important preface.
Norton, J. E. “Some Uncollected Authors, XXVII: Mary Astell, 1666-1731”. The Book Collector, Vol.
10
, 1961, pp. 58-65.
63

9 May 1731

MA died at Chelsea near London, in the house of her friend Lady Betty Hastings , of the effects of breast cancer, reported as a dropsy or swelling tympany.
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press, 1986.
323, 263

Biography

Birth and Family

12 November 1666

MA was born in Newcastle, the eldest of her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press, 1986.
29, 39

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