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.
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
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.
7
As a most abused...
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
Mary, Lady Chudleigh
MLC
's occasions include the public and private. She opens with an ode on the recent death of the queen's only surviving child
, in which the speaker, unconventionally, rejects the consolation duly offered by...
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
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...
Textual Features
Charlotte Forman
With probably pleasurable irony and in the tradition of Mary Astell
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, this essay presents its author as a great admirer of the literary productions of the fair sex, which...
Textual Features
Mary Masters
At the end of the volume comes a stop-press addition: six letters added at the Request of some of her Friends,
Masters, Mary. Familiar Letters and Poems on Several Occasions. D. Henry and R. Cave.
309
of which two are feminist in tone. MM
here praises the writings of...
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...
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.
