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 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, 1996, p. vii - xxxiii.
xxix
and that...
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 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, 1998.
95
Yet in 1992 a copy of it was offered for sale at £3,500, while Astell
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, 1985, pp. 12-48.
25
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 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 Masters
At the end of the volume comes a stop-press addition: six letters added at the Request of some of her Friends,
qtd. in
Masters, Mary. Familiar Letters and Poems on Several Occasions. D. Henry and R. Cave, 1755.
309
of which two are feminist in tone. MM here praises the writings of...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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...

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