Women, Gender and Enlightenment

Did women have an Enlightenment? Historians have long excluded women from the Enlightenment orbit. However, competing images of 'Woman' loomed large in Enlightenment thought, and women themselves - as scientists and salonnières, bluestockings and governesses, political polemicists and novelists - contributed much to enlightened intellectual culture. This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the controversial, innovative role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.