Why read Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain?

Book cover of Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Book description

During the long eighteenth century, ideas of society and of social progress were first fully investigated. These investigations took place in the contexts of economic, theological, historical and literary writings which paid unprecedented attention to the place of women. Combining intellectual history with literary criticism, Karen O'Brien examines the central…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Ritchie Robertson

Author

O’Brien looks at the place of women in the British Enlightenment in two ways. Historians, especially in Scotland, offered progressive narratives of the history of civilization, in which women had the task of softening the manners of history’s male protagonists. Women writers, on the other hand, could not be reduced to such a subordinate role, but were independent-minded and often radical. We have all heard of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, but she had many predecessors, notably the politically radical historian Catharine Macaulay, whose voices are presented here.

From Ritchie's list on the Enlightenment.