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.
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
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...
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...
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...
Anthologization
Judith Drake
The lengthy title lists the satirical sketches that the work contains.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
The attribution to JD
by name comes from a catalogue published by Edmund Curll
in 1741 (which mentions James Drake
as arranging the publication...
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.
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 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...
Cultural formation
Ann Cook
AC
, apparently English and presumably white, presents an interesting study in class consciousness. She links herself with poor, low Servants in indignation at their treatment by the gentry class. She hints that her parents...
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...
Textual Features
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
Her choice of Descartes is interesting in view of his particular interest for such proto-feminist writers as Mary Astell
in the early eighteenth century. Her other two essays on philosophy were about John Locke
and...
SC
was a great networker. Having met George Ballard
, a local man (perhaps because her sister was a patient of his mother, who was a midwife), she introduced him to Elizabeth Elstob
and to...
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
.
Textual Features
Sarah Chapone
SC
's attitude to this very public fallen woman is unusual and carefully analysed. The situation recalls that of Mary Astell
writing about Hortense Mancini
in Reflections on Marriage.
Glover, Susan Paterson, and Sarah Chapone. “Introduction”. The Hardships of the English Laws, Routledge, pp. 1-16.
