SOURCE: "The Close of the Century," in Women in Eighteenth-Century America: A Study of Opinion and Social Usage, Columbia University Press, 1935, pp. 175-7.

In the following excerpt from a study of women in eighteenth-century America, Benson discusses Murray's interest in women's rights.

. . .Mrs. Judith Sargent Murray under the name "Constantia" produced a number of essays which appeared in the Massachusetts Magazine and other periodicals. The articles in the Massachusetts Magazine were later reprinted in three volumes under the title, The Gleaner, a book dedicated to John Adams.⁵ The collection, which included two plays and a novel of sorts, had a number of familiar essays in avowed imitation of the Spectator, some of them dealing with women's problems. The essays as they first appeared had purported to be the work of a man but the sex of the writer was admitted in the preface of The Gleaner .⁶ In the...