Read more
This is the second of two collections of correspondence written by English women philosophers. This volume covers the eighteenth century and focuses on the letters of Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Editor Jacqueline Broad's annotations and introductions provide historical context and technical explanation for the modern reader. She situates the philosophers' contributions as significant in early modern thought and demonstrates
philosophy's development in this time period as shaped by the participation of women thinkers.
About the author
Jacqueline Broad is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophical, Historical, and International Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. Her main areas of research are early modern philosophy, the history of women's ideas, and historical feminist thought. She recently published Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence (OUP 2019), and an edited collection of essays with Karen Detlefsen,
Women and Liberty, 1600-1800 (OUP 2017).
Summary
This is the second of two collections of correspondence written by early modern English women philosophers. In this volume, Jacqueline Broad presents letters from three influential thinkers of the eighteenth century: Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Broad provides introductory essays for each figure and explanatory annotations to clarify unfamiliar language, content, and historical context for the modern reader. Her selections make
available many letters that have never been published before or that live scattered in various archives, obscure manuscripts, and rare books. The discussions range in subject from moral theology and ethics to epistemology and metaphysics; they involve some well-known thinkers of the period, such as John
Norris, George Hickes, Mary Chudleigh, John Locke, and Edmund Law. By centering epistolary correspondence, Broad's anthology works to reframe early modern philosophy, the foundation for so much of twentieth-century philosophy, as consisting of collaborative debates that women actively participated in and shaped. Together with its companion volume, Women Philosophers of Eighteenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence is an invaluable primary resource for students, scholars, and
those undertaking further research in the history of women's contributions to the formation and development of early modern thought.
