The course will cover a period of British history known as ‘the long 18 th century’, as it began in the late 1600s and continued into the early 1800s. It was a time when women took advantage of social changes which gave them a chance to enter spheres previously reserved for men. Women had been allowed to appear on stage as early as 1660. There were new forms of literature, such as novels and books for children. Botany gave women an entrance into the world of science.

Religious movements, such as Methodism, provided an opportunity for women to speak and teach. They also inspired women to work for causes such as the abolition of the slave trade. The modern concept of ‘human rights’, at first apparently applicable only to male human beings, led the way to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women.

The course will cover both famous women, such as Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen, and those who are less well known, e.g., the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, the members of the Bluestocking Society, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain.