Judith Drake was an English intellectual and author who was active in the last decade of the 17th century. She was part of a circle of intellectuals, authors, and philosophers which included Mary Astell, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Elizabeth Elstob, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John Norris. Almost nothing besides her friendship with this intellectual group is known about her personal life. She is remembered in the field of feminist l...
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Judith Drake was an English intellectual and author who was active in the last decade of the 17th century. She was part of a circle of intellectuals, authors, and philosophers which included Mary Astell, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Elizabeth Elstob, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and John Norris. Almost nothing besides her friendship with this intellectual group is known about her personal life. She is remembered in the field of feminist literature for her 1696 essay, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex.
One of the first records of a woman writing in English is Julian of Norwich, who wrote her A Book of Showings around the year 1400. Three hundred years later, only a handful of female authors had joined her. When Judith Drake and the other intellectuals of her circle began writing, they were still an incredible minority and subject to much nay saying. In England, the Restoration period just after the English Civil War brought a time of political, scientific, and literary...
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