First published in 1984, this book filled an acknowledged gap in the social history of the eighteenth century. Drawing on newspapers, journals, memoirs, diaries, courtesy books, county surveys and records, it also does so on the literature of the period. It examines the role assigned to women in society and explores attitudes of the time and the real experience of women.

This anthology gathers together various texts by and about women, ranging from `conduct' manuals to pamphlets on prostitution, from medical texts to critical definitions of women's writing, from anti-female satires to appeals for female equality. By making this material more widely available, Women in the Eighteenth Century complements the current upsurge in feminist writing on eighteenth-century literary history and offers students the opportunity to make their own rereadings of literary texts and their ideological contexts.