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
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 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...
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...
Dedications Elizabeth Tipper
The title-page continues: The Pilgrim's Viaticum; or, The Destitute, but not Forlorn, Being a Divine Poem, Digested from Meditations upon the Holy Scripture. The title-page quotes Psalm 119, about loving God's law. This...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Thomas
She was a friend of John Norris of Bemerton from about 1695, or sixteen years before his death.
Curll, Edmund et al. “The Life of Corinna. Written by Herself”. Pylades and Corinna, p. iv - lxxx.
xii-xiii
Norris advised her on her study of French, and on not taking time from her serious...
Textual Features Elizabeth Thomas
This collection contains the harvest of Thomas's poetic career. Her Muse, she says, is unfashionably incapable of dealing with love or obscenity: this shows clearly that her original poetic context was a Restoration one.
Thomas, Elizabeth. Miscellany Poems on Several Subjects. Thomas Combes.
50-1
Textual Features Elizabeth Thomas
These letters provide a vivid picture of ET's life: her cultured friends, her alertness to read and comment on new and old books (she and Gwinnett discuss Locke , Malebranche , Norris , Astell
Family and Intimate relationships Jane Squire
JS might be related (her father had several brothers) to the high-church John Squire of St Leonard's parish, Shoreditch, who is mentioned in The Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, by John Walker (with...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
death John Norris
JN , philospher, clergyman, and friend of Mary Astell , died at his parish of Bemerton in Wiltshire, the place with which his name is generally associated.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Friends, Associates John Norris
JN conducted correspondences with a number of learned women: Mary, Lady Chudleigh (who visited him at his home), Damaris, Lady Masham (with whom his relationship ended in difference of opinion), and Elizabeth Thomas , all...

Timeline

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

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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'...

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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...

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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...

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 .

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

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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.

1707: George Hickes published, as Instructions...

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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...

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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.