Women and Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Britain / Karen O'Brien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Brien, Karen (Karen Elisabeth), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

Women in literature.

Sex role in literature.

Women--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Women.

Sex role--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Sex role.

Feminism--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Feminism.

Enlightenment--Great Britain.

Enlightenment.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--18th century.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 310 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Women & Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 importance to the British Enlightenment both of women writers and of women as a subject of enquiry. She examines the work of a range of writers, including John Locke, Mary Astell, David Hume, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, T. R. Malthus, the Bluestockings, Catharine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft and the first female historians of the early nineteenth century. She explores the way in which Enlightenment ideas created a language and a framework for understanding the moral agency and changing social roles of women, without which the development of nineteenth-century feminism would not have been possible.

Contents:

Anglican Whig feminism in England, 1690-1760 : self-love, reason and social benevolence

From savage to Scotswoman : the history of femininity

Roman, Gothic and medieval women : the historicisation of womanhood, 1750-c.1804

Catharine Macaulay's histories of England : liberty, civilisation and the female historian

Good manners and partial civilisation in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft

The history women and the population men, 1760-1830.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-19473-3

0-521-77427-6

1-282-05869-X

9786612058691

0-511-57631-5

0-511-50857-3

0-511-50501-9

0-511-50923-5

0-511-50715-1

OCLC:

476264998