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 women's creativity to add fresh, at times controversial, insights into the female view of the intellectual world. Bringing together leading experts on British women's lives, work and writings, the volume seeks to rediscover women's appropriations of masculine disciplines and to examine their interventions into the intellectual world. Through their engagement with a unique perspective on women's lives and achievements, the essays make important contributions to the existing body of knowledge in this important area that will inform future scholarship.
About the AuthorTeresa Barnard is an independent scholar.
Reviews"In British Women and the Intellectual World in the Long Eighteenth Century, Teresa Barnard and her contributors demonstrate women's substantial participation in the period's scientific, political, philosophical, and theological developments. The fresh scholarship in these essays advances our recognition of women's interventions in these crucial fields of inquiry."
- Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Wake Forest University, USA
"Scholarly in approach and presentation, this useful book has been provided with convenient footnotes rather than awkward endnotes and has a good bibliography. (...) Experts in the field will find most of the individual essays of interest."
- Caroline Franklin, Swansea University, UK
"There is much to commend in this book's bringing together of a variety of case studies..."
- Angela Byrne, Ulster University, Northern Ireland
Book InformationISBN 9781472437457
Author Teresa BarnardFormat Hardback
Page Count 214
Imprint RoutledgePublisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 544g
