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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Matilda Betham
MMB also has strong coverage of writers, scholars, and activists, like Anne Askew , Mary Astell (whose uncle she credits with having generously tutored her), and Ann Bacon . She seems to have excluded the...
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...

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