Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, An.
[Drake, Judith]. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. In which are inserted the Characters of A Pedant, A Vertuoso, A Squire, A Poetaster, A Beau, A City-Critick, &c. In a Letter to a Lady. Written by a Lady. London: Printed for A. Roper and E. Wilkinson at the Black Boy and R. Clavel at the Peacock, in Fleet Street, 1696.
12mo, [24]. 148, [4] pp; frontispiece illustration; light discoloration here and there throughout text; title page very slightly trimmed (with no loss to text); marbled endpapers; a.e.g; bound in red morocco by Cecil & Larkins with decorative gilt rules at covers and spine; binding somewhat worn around the spine with some splitting at the front joint; very good.
Second edition. (Published the same year as the first, with the addition of verses by James Drake.) With commendatory verses by James Drake. Authorship of the essay is unclear: Mary Astell as well as Judith Drake have been suggested as its author. CBEL and other authorities ascribe authorship to Judith Drake and certainly the presence of her brother’s poems would imply Drake as the author.
Little is known of Judith Drake. She practiced medicine and in 1707 completed the preface to her brother’s Anthropologia Nova, a work on anatomy. James Drake was a doctor and also wielded a pen as Tory pamphleteer. The writer dedicates the book to the future Queen Anne and after the appropriate homage launches her attack on those customs which so prohibit the education of women. The natural abilities of women, after all, are equal to that of men: “I wou'd not have any of our little, unthinking Adversaries triumph at my allowing a disproportion between the Improvements of our Sex and theirs...” As women have been portrayed so often as weak, vain and foolish, Drake turns the tables in a series of biting caricatures of the “pedant,” “squire,” etc. One of the earliest and most effective feminist titles. “An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex” underwent three editions shortly after publication and recently has been reprinted as well as reproduced on microfilm as a classic feminist text. CBEL, II, p. 121. The Feminist Companion, p. 308. Franklin, pp. 7-8 (Franklin also ascribes the essay to Mary Astell).
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