Essays in Defence of the Female Sex Custom, Education and Authority in Seventeenth-century England

Letters, diaries, memoirs, conduct books and early feminist pamphlets: Essays in Defence of the Female Sex: Custom, Education, and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England is a two-part, text-based volume on the pivotal figures and most distinctive, sometimes contradictory, aspects of the querelle des femmes in Stuart England. Background information is given through male and especially female-authored sources, while the close analysis of [Hanna Woolley]â (TM)s, Bathsua Makinâ (TM)s, Marry Astellâ (TM)s, Judith Drakeâ (TM)s and Eugeniaâ (TM)s most renowned tracts sheds light on womenâ (TM)s difficult path towards emancipation. Addressed to both specialist and non-specialist readers, Essays in Defence of the Female Sex will also explain whyâ "and to what extentâ "early feminist pamphleteering combined theory with practice, tradition with innovation, reality with utopia.