Enlightenment Biographies John Anderson (1726–96) A Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, John Anderson dedicated himself to promoting women’s higher education. Born in Dumbartonshire, the son of devout Presbyterians (both his father and grandfather were ministers), Anderson demon- strated an early and persistent belief that women – contra popular theories of the period – were ‘rational beings’ and deserved every opportunity to ‘cultivate’ their understanding. This commitment culminated in a deathbed wish to found a coeducational technical university. In a detailed will, Anderson outlined a plan whereby ‘the ladies of Glasgow’ might be provided with ‘such a stock of general knowledge’ as to make them the ‘most cultivated in all of Europe’. His school would offer a ‘Ladies Course’ in Natural Philosophy where women, ‘for a small fee,’ would be introduced to a range of scientific subjects. Although Anderson did not live to see his dream realized, the school, aptly named Anderson’s Institution, was successfully established in 1796. As Anderson had requested, the Institution offered women courses in astronomy, electricity, magnetism, hydrostatics, hydraulics and optics. Thomas Garnett, one of the school’s early instructors, praised Anderson for his recognition that providing women with a better education was a neces- sary part of the ‘civilizing’ process. As Garnett wrote in his 1800 Observations on a Tour through the Highlands, ‘The ladies of this city are undoubtedly much indebted to the founder [Anderson], as being the first person in this island who set on foot a plan of ra- tional education for them, which affords the means of acquiring knowledge, not only useful to themselves in various circumstances of life, and capable of always supplying a rational amusement, without the necessity of seeking it elsewhere; but which fits them for companions for the other sex, and puts them on a footing of equality in conversation.’ Arianne Chernock Mary Astell (1666–?) Mary Astell, a feminist avant la lettre and a philosopher, published eight polemical works in the service of women, conservative Tory politics, and the church of England; she also planned and raised the funds for a girls’ school in Chelsea, where she lived most of her life. Born into a family of coal hostmen in Newcastle in 1666, she was educated by her clergy- man uncle, Ralph Astell, who had been influenced by the ‘so-called ‘Cambridge Platonists’ with whom he attended university. The Astell family fortunes declined when her father died, and sometime in 1689 or 1690, this remarkable, intellectual young woman went to London to seek patronage. Her philosophical correspondence with John Norris of Bemerton so affected him that he asked her if he might publish their correspondence. She agreed on the condition of her anonymity and that the volume of their letters (Letters Concerning the Love of God [1695]) be dedicated to Lady Catherine Jones, her lifelong friend and patron. Meanwhile, Astell pub- lished her first and most popular feminist tract, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), arguing for women’s intellectual equality and the necessity for their education; she proposed a retreat where women might pursue intellectual lives. In 1697 she published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies Part II, continuing several philosophical threads of her previ- ous work, and in 1700 Some Reflections Upon Marriage, about how marriage subordinated women to men. Thus Astell published her three most feminist works by 1700, and was satirized by Swift, plagiarized by Berkeley, and imitated by Defoe. 716 Enlightenment Biographies 717 In 1704 she opposed occasional conformity in Moderation truly Stated and A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons, much admired by George Hickes and other non-jurors, and published the high church tract An Impartial Enquiry Into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War In This Kingdom. Her The Christian Religion As Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705) was a philosophical rejoinder to Locke’s materialism and Bart’lemy Fair: Or, An Enquiry after Wit (1709) a response to Shafesbury’s Letter Concerning Enthusiasm. Astell was a feminist philosopher of the Enlightenment who championed women and published responses to the major thinkers of her day. She was supported financially and psychologically by a coterie of aristocratic women who admired her mind and spirit. Ruth Perry Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825) Although often remembered simply as ‘Mrs. Barbauld’ the writer for children, Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin) was a woman of letters who earned renown as a poet, essayist, hymnist, political and religious pamphleteer, children’s author, reviewer, and editor. Her brother, John Aikin (1747–1822), a practicing physician and popular author in his own right, collaborated with her on a volume of prose pieces and on well-known works for chil- dren. In 1758 their father, Dr John Aikin, accepted a post at the Warrington Academy, which became the leading college for Dissenters. Among the tutors there were Joseph Priestley, Gilbert Wakefield, and William Enfield. Barbauld spent the most intensely pro- ductive period of her poetic career, between the ages of 22 and 31, at Warrington, culmi- nating in her influential Poems (1773; reissued in expanded form in 1792). After her marriage in 1774 to Rochemont Barbauld, a French Protestant educated at Warrington, the couple moved to Palgrave, where Rochemont had been offered a Dissenting ministry. They lived there until 1785, sharing the management of a boarding school for boys. Following their resignation of the school and a tour of France, the Barbaulds settled in Hampstead, where they would remain until 1802. During these years Anna Barbauld engaged in the major political debates of the period: the movement to repeal the Corporation and Test Acts, the attempt to abolish the slave trade, and the debate over the French Revolution. The remainder of her life was spent in Stoke Newington, where her professional work con- tinued unabated: she wrote for the new Annual Review; edited Richardson’s Correspondence (1804), Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder (1805), and The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside (1807); edited and produced prefaces for the 50-volume collection The British Novelists (1810); and published her last major poem, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812). Daniel White Laura Bassi (1711–78) Laura Bassi spent over forty-five years teaching physics at the University of Bologna. She might be described as the first woman to pursue a paid scientific career. The daughter of a lawyer, Bassi was initially tutored at home by the family physician, Gaetano Tacconi. She subsequently met other members of Bologna’s scholarly community who were equally impressed with her intellectual abilities. The archbishop of Bologna, Prospero Lambertini, encouraged Bassi’s patrons to propose her as a candidate for a university degree in philoso- phy. On 17 April 1732, Bassi publicly defended forty-nine philosophical theses; she received her laurea on 12 May – the second woman whose graduation we can document from any university. After the success of her degree, her supporters agreed to create a paid professorship at the University of Bologna, which Bassi accepted on 29 October 1732. She taught philosophy, mathematics, and physics at the university until her death in 1778, and subsequently held two other professorships – an appointment at the Collegio Montalto 718 Enlightenment Biographies and, as of 1776, a professorship in experimental physics at the Academy of the Institute for Sciences in Bologna. Bassi married the physician Giuseppe Veratti (1707–1793) in 1738. In addition to producing a household of eight children (five of whom survived infancy), they created an experimental household with an impressive physics cabinet. Bassi routinely taught students and visitors in their home. Celebrated throughout Europe for her accom- plishments, she enjoyed a cameo appearance in Francesco Algarotti’s Newtonianism for Ladies (1737), and corresponded with such leading experimenters as the abbé Nollet, the physicist Alessandro Volta, and her cousin, the naturalist Lazzaro Spallanzani, who claimed he never would have become an experimenter if he had not studied with her. Paula Findlen Mme LePrince de Beaumont (1711–80) A teacher and prolific authoress, Jeanne-Marie LePrince was born in Rouen, Normandy, to a family of craftsmen specialising in ecclesiastical ornament. At 12 she entered an Ursuline convent near Rouen specialising in preparing girls to teach. In 1735 she went to Luneville, the court-city of the Duke of Lorraine, obtaining patronage from the Duchess-Regent Elisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans. She taught music and dancing to the duchess’ daughter, and in court circles. Gaining a pension in 1743 made her the target of a mercenary marriage proposal from Antoine Grimard de Beaumont, another patron’s raffish godson, which pro- duced a daughter, Elisabeth. She annulled the marriage two years later, and began to write criticisms of natural religion and the libertine morality she believed to be its consequence, beginning with The Triumph of Truth (1748). The keynote of her books was a blending of austere Christian piety with modern rationalism, possibly inspired by Poulain de la Barre. She came to London in 1750 and successfully combined writing and running a school in London for young ladies, using contacts close to Frederick and Augusta, Prince and Princess of Wales. Her books include the series of dialogues and fables entitled in English The Young Misses Magazine (1759), The Young Ladies Magazine (1760), and Instructions for Young Ladies on their Entering into Life, Their Duties in the Married-State, and Towards their Children (1764). Civan, King of Bungo (1754) is an oriental conduct book for princes; later conduct fictions are Letters of Mme de Montier (1767) and Moral Tales (1776). In London she had an associa- tion, possibly a secret marriage, with Thomas Pichon, a Frenchman who had spied in Canada for the English, but left in 1763 with her daughter, who married an army surgeon serving in Savoy.