Pioneering 18th Century British WomenTop of Mind with Julie Rose • Season 1, Episode 723, Segment 5
Jan 11, 2018 • 23m
Guest: Jane Hinckley, Professor of Comparative Arts and Letters, Brigham Young University
In the century that witnessed the American and French Revolutions, social revolutions also rocked England and led to dramatic changes for women. In the 1700s, women could more freely write, publish and participate in the public sphere than they ever could before. The women like Mary Wollestencraft and Frances Burney who seized these opportunities laid a foundation for their literary daughters—Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley—whose fame would overshadow that of the women who came before them.