Educating English Daughters – Late Seventeenth–Century Debates

Frances Teague is University Professor and Josiah Meigs Professor, Departments of English and of Theatre and Film Studies, at the University of Georgia. Margaret J. M. Ezell is Distinguished Professor of English and holder of the John and Sara Lindsey Chair of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. Jessica Walker is Assistant Professor of English at Alabama A&M University.

• ContentsIllustrations xiAbbreviations xiiiAcknowledgments xvINTRODUCTION 1PART I: BATHSUA MAKIN (1600–1681?) 25Bathsua Makin and Women’s Education 27The Ancient Education of Gentlewomen (1673) 51PART II: MARY MORE (1633–1716) and ROBERT WHITEHALL (1625–1685) 97Mary More and Robert Whitehall: Lives and Writings 99Mary More, The Woman’s Right (ca. 1674) 129Robert Whitehall, The Woman’s Right Proved False (ca. 1674) 145Bibliography 171Index 185

Mary More and Bathsua Makin wrote essays on female education that circulated in manuscript and print in the seventeenth century. This edition, lightly modernized and with substantial, rigorous introductions and useful notes, makes these two important texts — and a third by Robert Whitehall written in response to More — more accessible to contemporary readers. The volume is compelling reading and will be an important resource for those interested in the seventeenth-century querelle des femmes, women’s education, humanist learning, and the history of feminist thought.Edith SnookProfessor of English, University of New Brunswick