Patricia Springborg teaches political theory in the Department of Government, University of Sydney. She is the
editor of Astell : Political Writings.
Review
"Patricia Springborg has given us a thoroughly contextualized edition of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal
to the Ladies: Parts I and II. Her explanatory annotations as well as her knowledgeable exposition of Astell's
philosophical positions make available again these landmark texts ... and the well-chosen supplementary materials
demonstrate Astell's immediate impact on the intellectual circles of late seventeenth-century London."
--Ruth Perry, MIT
"This new edition of Astell's A Serious Proposal offers readers welcome access to the eloquence, argumentative
skill, and wit of Astell's powerful defense of women's education and of their intellectual abilities."
--Martine Watson Brownley, Emory University
"Springborg's introduction clearly places Astell's work in the context of two important early eighteenth-century
crosscurrents, the 'woman' question and the debate over empirical rationalism. She grounds Astell's writings in
the tradition of imagining intellectual communities of and for women but Springborg also usefully sets them in
the context of the larger philosophical debates over Locke's epistemology of environmental conditioning and psychological
sensationalism. Thus, Astell takes her place again among the voices of the Cambridge Platonists and the supporters
of the Port Royal School in this defining debate touching education and politics, both national and domestic. The
inclusion of four appendices (Drake's "Essay in Defence of the Female Sex," Defoe's "An Essay upon
Projects," and two essays from the Tatler commenting on Astell) make this a splendid package."
--Margaret J.M. Ezell, Texas A & M University
Broadview Press Web Site, April, 2003
Summary
Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is one of the most important and neglected works advocating the
establishment of women's academies. Its reception was so controversial that Astell responded with a lengthy sequel,
also in this volume. The cause of great notoriety, Astell's Proposal was imitated by Defoe in his "An Academy
for Women," parodied in the Tatler, satirized on the stage, plagiarized by Bishop Berkeley, and later mocked
by Gilbert and Sullivan in Princess Ida.
