Primary Contributors:
Cultures of Knowledge
Title-page of Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters concerning the Love of God, between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladies, and Mr John Norris (London, 1695). (Source of image: Early English Books Online)
Mary Astell (1666–1731)
The philosopher and promoter of women’s education Mary Astell was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1666, the elder of two surviving children in a family of coal merchants. Her uncle, Ralph Astell, a curate who had been educated at Cambridge, tutored his niece in philosophy and theology.
In her early twenties, Astell moved to London, probably with the intention of supporting herself as a writer. Life in the city was not easy for her, however, and she received financial help from William Sancroft, who served as archbishop of Canterbury until his deprivation in 1690 following the accession of William and Mary. In 1689, Astell presented Sancroft with a manuscript of her poems as a mark of her gratitude for his support.
Once settled in Chelsea, a well-to-do area that supported a cluster of girls’ schools, Astell continued her studies. She corresponded with a number of writers and scholars, including John Norris, and developed her thoughts on the education of women. In 1694, she brought out her first book, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, a call to women to acknowledge their ‘real Interest’ by undertaking serious study: ‘How can you be content to be in the World like Tulips in a Garden, to make a fine shew and be good for nothing’, she wrote (A Serious Proposal [1694], p. 9). This work was followed the subsequent year by the publication of her correspondence with John Norris (at the latter’s request) under the title Letters concerning the Love of God.
Thereafter, Astell continued to write. Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700), Moderation Truly Stated (1704), A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons (1704), and An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War in this Kingdom (1704) were followed by The Christian Religion, as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705), and Bart’lemy Fair, or, An Enquiry after Wit (1709), which she brought out under the pseudonym Mr Wotton.
Astell did not marry. Her publication A Serious Proposal gained her a number of significant female supporters, including Lady Catherine Jones (1672–1740), Anne, countess of Coventry (1673–1763), and Lady Elizabeth [Betty] Hastings (1682–1739). She persevered with her own education and is known to have studied astronomy with Flamsteed at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, during the autumn and winter of 1697–8. In 1709, she founded a charity school in Chelsea to educate the daughters of pensioners in the Royal Hospital. She became a source of considerable inspiration for a number of women, including Lady Mary Chudleigh (1656–1710), Elizabeth Thomas (1675–1731), Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), and Sarah Chapone (1699–1764). She tried, albeit to no avail at the time, to persuade Mary Wortley Montagu to publish her ‘Turkish letters’, the notes and observations she had written during the two years her husband was posted as ambassador to Constantinople. Astell drafted a preface for the collection.
In her final years, Astell fell ill and, in 1731, underwent a mastectomy as part of her treatment for breast cancer. She died in Chelsea within two months of the operation, and was buried on 14 May at All Saints in Chelsea (Chelsea Old Church).
Partners and Additional Contributors
The metadata for Mary Astell’s letters have been collated by the Cultures of Knowledge editorial team from a number of different published sources. These include Ruth Perry’s biography The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (1986) and Astell’s own Letters concerning the Love of God, between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladies, and Mr John Norris (1695). The latter was published in 2016 by Routledge as a modern edition, edited by E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New. For full bibliographic details of these sources, please see below.
Key Bibliographic Source(s)
Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), Appendix C, ‘Mary Astell’s Letters, 1693–1730’.
Further resources
Bibliography
Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters concerning the Love of God, ed. E. Derek Taylor and Melvyn New, ‘The Early Modern Englishwoman, 1500–1750: Contemporary Editions’ (London and New York: Routledge, 2016).
Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1697).
Mary Astell and John Norris, Letters Concerning the Love of God, Between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladies, and Mr John Norris (London, 1695).
Ruth Perry, ‘The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English feminist’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), Appendix C, ‘Mary Astell’s Letters, 1693–1730’.