British Women and the Intellectual World in the Long Eighteenth Century [Hardcover]

Highlighting the remarkable women who found ways around the constraints placed on their intellectual growth, this collection of essays shows how their persistence opened up attributes of potent female imagination, radical endeavour, literary vigour, and self-education that compares well with male intellectual achievement in the long eighteenth century. Disseminating their knowledge through literary and documentary prose with unapologetic self-confidence, women such as Anna Barbauld, Anna Seward, Elizabeth Inchbald and Joanna Baillie usurped subjects perceived as masculine to contribute to scientific, political, philosophical and theological debate and progress. This multifaceted exploration goes beyond traditional readings of womens creativity to add fresh, at times controversial, insights into the female view of the intellectual world. Bringing together leading experts on British womens lives, work and writings, the volume seeks to rediscover womens appropriations of masculine disciplines and to examine their interventions into the intellectual world. Through their engagement with a unique perspective on womens lives and achievements, the essays make important contributions to the existing body of knowledge in this important area that will inform future scholarship.

Part 1 An Engagement with Science:

'To bring this useful invention into fashion in England': Mary Wortley Montagu as medical expert

Daniel J. R. Grey

The lure of the volcano in the female literary imagination

Teresa Barnard

Women's 'reason' for a 'rising generation': Mary Wollstonecraft, paediatric science and the child of nature

Malini Roy

Part 2 Religious Discourses:

Anxiety, authorship, authority: the maternal feminine and the divine in Hannah More's Sacred Dramas

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