SOURCE: Deluna, D. N. “Mary Astell: England's First Feminist Literary Critic.” Women's Studies 22, No. 2 (March 1993): 231-42.

In following essay, Deluna examines the two parts of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies as primary examples of Astell's feminism, as well as what these publications advocated for the women of her day, and how they were received by other social critics.

For literary critics and historians concerned to explore the early configurations of modern feminism in England, it has become old news that Mary Astell is a figure who deserves serious attention. This is news which Ruth Perry, more than anyone else, helped spread. In work partly anticipated by Joan Kinnaird, Hilda Smith, and Katherine Rogers, Perry (in an impressive article in Eighteenth-Century Studies and in her book The Celebrated Mary Astell) has now succeeded in establishing Astell's credentials as England's first major feminist.

By “Astell's feminism,” what Perry and...