Cover

Half-title

Series information

Title page

Copyright information

Table of contents

List of figures

List of figures

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction

Literacy, education and the life of the mind

Women’s intellectual lives in an era of Enlightenment

Letters and letter-writing

Sites and communities

Sources

Material, spatial and textual: approaches to studying letters

The material

The spatial

The textual

Notes

Part I Women and learning

1 Getting started

Literacy and self-education

Expectations of intellectual life

Access to information

Notes

2 Becoming an ‘intellectual’

Intellectual identities

The ‘learned lady’ and the amateur intellectual

Lifecycle and the intellectual biography

Female intellect, originality and the public domain

Notes

Part II Putting pen to paper

3 Writing and thinking

The epistolary academy

Address and formality

Writing and thinking: the importance of correspondence

The content of letters

Networks and contacts

Conclusion

Notes

4 Spaces for writing

The home as a site of learning

Spaces for reading and writing

Time and the domestic space

Privacy and the psychology of space

Imagined spaces

Notes

Part III Hearts and minds

5 Connecting reason and emotion

Mind and body

Epistolary relationships

Letters and perfect friendship

Letter-writing as self-help

Conclusion

Notes

6 A seedbed for change

Letters

Gender

Space

The next generation

Notes

Appendix

Bibliography

Primary sources

Manuscript

Bedfordshire and Luton Archive Service

Bodleian Library

British Library

Derbyshire Record Office

East Sussex Record Office, The Keep Archives

Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies

Library of the Society of Friends

Print

Secondary sources

Unpublished

Index