Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is one of the most important and neglected works advocating the establishment of women's academies. Its reception was so controversial that Astell responded with a lengthy sequel, also in this volume. The cause of great notoriety, Astell's Proposal was imitated by Defoe in his "An Academy for Women," parodied in the Tatler, satirized on the stage, plagiarized by Bishop Berkeley, and later mocked by Gilbert and Sullivan in Princess Ida.

Comments:

"Patricia Springborg has given us a thoroughly contextualized edition of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies: Parts I and II. Her explanatory annotations as well as her knowledgeable exposition of Astell's philosophical positions make available again these landmark texts...and the well-chosen supplementary materials demonstrate Astell's immediate impact on the intellectual circles of late seventeenth-century London." - Ruth Perry, MIT

"This new edition of Astell's A Serious Proposal offers readers welcome access to the eloquence, argumentative skill, and wit of Astell's powerful defense of women's education and of their intellectual abilities." - Martine Watson Brownley, Emory University

"Springborg's introduction clearly places Astell's work in the context of two important early eighteenth-century crosscurrents, the 'woman' question and the debate over empirical rationalism. She grounds Astell's writings in the tradition of imagining intellectual communities of and for women but Springborg also usefully sets them in the context of the larger philosophical debates over Locke's epistemology of environmental conditioning and psychological sensationalism. Thus, Astell takes her place again among the voices of the Cambridge Platonists and the supporters of the Port Royal School in this defining debate touching education and politics, both national and domestic. The inclusion of four appendices (Drake's "Essay in Defence of the Female Sex," Defoe's "An Essay upon Projects," and two essays from the Tatler commenting on Astell) make this a splendid package." - Margaret J.M. Ezell, Texas A & M University

Patricia Springborg teaches political theory in the Department of Government, University of Sydney. She is the editor of Astell: Political Writings.

Academics please note that this is a title classified as having a restricted allocation of complimentary copies. While the availability of bound complimentary copies is restricted to desk copies only, electronic complimentary copies are readily available for those professors wishing to consider this title for possible course adoption. Should you choose to adopt the book after viewing an electronic copy we will be happy to provide a bound desk copy.

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Acknowledgments 

Introduction 

Mary Astell: A Brief Chronology 

A Note on the Text

A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I

A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part II

Appendix A: Judith Drake's An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696)

Appendix B: Daniel Defoe's An Essay upon Projects (1697)

Appendix C: From The Tatler, no. 32 (June 23, 1709)

Appendix D: From The Tatler, no. 63 (September 3, 1709)

Select Bibliography