The Unsex'd Females
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The Unsex'd Females
''The Unsex'd Females, a Poem'' (1798), by Richard Polwhele, is a polemical intervention into the public debates over the role of women at the end of the 18th century. The poem is primarily concerned with what Polwhele characterizes as the encroachment of radical French political and philosophical ideas into British society, particularly those associated with the Enlightenment. These subjects come together, for Polwhele, in the revolutionary figure of Mary Wollstonecraft. The poem is of interest to those interested in the history of women, as well as revolutionary politics, and is an example of the British backlash against the ideals of the French Revolution; it is representative of the strategic conflation of women writers with revolutionary ideals during this period; and it helps illuminate the obstacles faced by women writers at the end of the 18th century. Historical context Responding to women authors according to presumptions about their sexuality has a long history; a comp ...
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Richard Polwhele
Richard Polwhele (6 January 1760 – 12 March 1838) was a Cornish people, Cornish clergyman, poetry, poet and historian of Cornwall and Devon. Biography Richard Polwhele's ancestors long held the manor of Treworgan, 4 3/4 miles south-east of Truro in Cornwall, which family bore as arms: ''Sable, a saltire engrailed ermine''. He was born at Truro, Cornwall, and met literary luminaries Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More at an early age. He was educated at Truro Grammar School, where he precociously published ''The Fate of Llewellyn''. He went on to Christ Church, Oxford, continuing to write poetry, but left without taking a degree. In 1782 he was ordained a curate, married Loveday Warren, and moved to a curacy at Kenton, Devon. On his wife's death in 1793, Polwhele was left with three children. Later that year he married Mary Tyrrell, briefly taking up a curacy at Exmouth, Devon, Exmouth before being appointed to the small living of Manaccan in Cornwall in 1794. From 1806, when ...
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American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States of America as the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of liberal democracy. American colonists objected to being taxed by the Parliament of Great Britain, a body in which they had no direct representation. Before the 1760s, Britain's American colonies had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial legislatures. During the 1760s, however, the British Parliament passed a number of acts that were intended to bring the American colonies under more direct rule from the British metropole and increasingly intertwine the economies of the colonies with those of Brit ...
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Heroic Couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the ''Legend of Good Women'' and the ''Canterbury Tales'',Hobsbaum, Philip. ''Metre, Rhythm and Verse Form''. Routledge (1996) p.23 and generally considered to have been perfected by John Dryden and Alexander Pope in the Restoration Age and early 18th century respectively. Example A frequently-cited example illustrating the use of heroic couplets is this passage from ''Cooper's Hill'' by John Denham, part of his description of the Thames: History The term "heroic couplet" is sometimes reserved for couplets that are largely ''closed'' and self-contained, as opposed to the enjambed couplets of poets like John Donne. The heroic couplet is often identified with the English Baroque works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, who used the form for their tra ...
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Thomas James Mathias
Thomas James Mathias, FRS (c.1754 – August 1835) was a British satirist and scholar. Life Mathias was educated in Kingston upon Thames and Trinity College, Cambridge. He held some minor appointments in the royal household (sub-treasurer, 1782 and treasurer). He died in Naples, Italy. Mathias became a vegetarian after reading Mandeville's ''The Fable of the Bees''. He gave up all meat and lived on a diet of milk and vegetables. Works He was an accomplished Italian scholar, and translated various English works into Italian, such as ''Canzoni e prose toscane'', and vice versa. He also produced a fine edition of the work of Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classics, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country ..., on which he lost heavily. His chief work was ''The Pursuits of Literature'' (1794), an undiscrimi ...
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A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman
''A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects'' (1792), written by British philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the ''Rights of Woman'' after reading Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the ...
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Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The Tory ethos has been summed up with the phrase "God, King, and Country". Tories are monarchists, were historically of a high church Anglican religious heritage, and opposed to the liberalism of the Whig faction. The philosophy originates from the Cavalier faction, a royalist group during the English Civil War. The Tories political faction that emerged in 1681 was a reaction to the Whig-controlled Parliaments that succeeded the Cavalier Parliament. As a political term, Tory was an insult derived from the Irish language, that later entered English politics during the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1681. It also has exponents in other parts of the former British Empire, such as the Loyalists of British America, who opposed US secession duri ...
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British Critic
The ''British Critic: A New Review'' was a quarterly publication, established in 1793 as a conservative and high-church review journal riding the tide of British reaction against the French Revolution. The headquarters was in London. The journal ended publication in 1843. High-church review The Society for the Reformation of Principles, founded in 1792 by William Jones of Nayland and William Stevens, established the ''British Critic'' in 1793. Robert Nares and William Beloe, editor and assistant editor respectively, were joint proprietors with the booksellers and publishers Francis and Charles Rivington. It was started as a monthly, but in 1825 its frequency was shifted to quarterly. Nares and Beloe edited the review for about 20 years. Around 1811 the magazine was bought by Joshua Watson and Henry Handley Norris, associated with the high-church pressure group known as the Hackney Phalanx. After 1825 the review "became more narrowly theological in scope". Tractarian takeover ...
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Anti-Jacobin Review
''The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor'', was a conservative British political periodical active from 1798 to 1821. Founded founded by John Gifford (pseud. of John Richards Green) after the demise of William Gifford's '' The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner'', the journal contained essays, reviews, and satirical engravings. It has been described as "often scurrilous" and "ultra-Tory" and was a vocal element of the British Anti-Jacobin backlash against the ideals of the French Revolution. History The first edition was published on 1 August 1798 and was advertised in ''The Times'' as "containing Original Criticism; a Review of the Reviewers; Miscellaneous Matter in Prose and Verse, Lists of Marriages, Births, Deaths and Promotions; and a Summary of Foreign and Domestic Politics." Gifford served as its editor until 1806. The periodical was covertly funded by the British government. Contributors included Robert Bisset (1758/9–1805), J ...
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Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin (; ) was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary political movement that was the most famous political club during the French Revolution (1789–1799). The club got its name from meeting at the Dominican rue Saint-Honoré Monastery of the Jacobins. The Dominicans in France were called ''Jacobins'' (, corresponds to ''Jacques'' in French and ''James'' in English) because their first house in Paris was the Saint Jacques Monastery. The terms Jacobin and Jacobinism have been used in a variety of senses. Prior to 1793, the terms were used by contemporaries to describe the politics of Jacobins in the congresses of 1789 through 1792. With the ascendancy of Maximilien Robespierre and the Montagnards into 1793, they have since become synonymous with the policies of the Reign of Terror, with Jacobinism now meaning "Robespierrism." As Jacobinism was memorialized through legend, heritage, tradition and other nonhistorical means over the centuries, the term acquir ...
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John Bull
John Bull is a national personification of the United Kingdom in general and England in particular, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic works. He is usually depicted as a stout, middle-aged, country-dwelling, jolly and matter-of-fact man. He originated in satirical works of the early 18th century and would come to stand for " English liberty" in opposition to revolutionaries. He was popular through the 18th and 19th centuries until the time of the First World War, when he generally stopped being seen as representative of the "common man". Origin John Bull originated as a satirical character created by John Arbuthnot, a friend of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Bull first appeared in 1712 in Arbuthnot's pamphlet ''Law is a Bottomless Pit''."AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion," Metropolitan Museum of Art (2006), exhibition brochure, p. 2. The same year Arbuthnot published a four-part political narrative ''The History of John Bull''. In ...
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Janet Todd
Janet Margaret Todd OBE (born 10 September 1942) is a British academic and author. She was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare. Much of her work concerns Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and their circles. Career Academic career She has worked in universities in Ghana (Cape Coast), Puerto Rico ( Mayaguez), North America (New Brunswick), India (New Delhi), England (Norwich). She was appointed professor of English Literature at Glasgow University in 2000, and was then at Aberdeen University from 2004 until she took up in 2008 the post of president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, from which she retired in 2015. She is now a full-time novelist and researcher living in Cambridge. She is a Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Author Todd's writing concerns literature and culture of the Restoration and eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over a long career she has published m ...
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Reign Of Terror
The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety. There is disagreement among historians over when exactly "the Terror" began. Some consider it to have begun only in 1793, giving the date as either 5 September, June or March, when the Revolutionary Tribunal came into existence. Others, however, cite the earlier time of the September Massacres in 1792, or even July 1789, when the first killing of the revolution occurred. The term "Terror" being used to describe the period was introduced by the Thermidorian Reaction who took power after the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794, to discredit Robespierre and justify their actions. Today there is consensus amongst historians that the exceptional revo ...
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