This edition offers texts from Bathsua Makin and Mary More, and Robert Whitehall’s response to More’s argument. Makin describes the appropriate education for London merchants’ daughters, arguing that girls should be educated and should aspire to follow learned women in history, and that educated women improve their families and themselves. More argues that women have the right to an education, and that such an education shows that the inequality of married women under English law is a man-made institution. More’s argument drew objections from her Oxford reader, Robert Whitehall, who preserved her manuscript with his own. Makin and More enjoyed a measure of public recognition and esteem, yet after their deaths, they and their texts were largely ignored until the late twentieth century.

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.