A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers 1660-1800. by Todd, Janet, editor - 1986

"...despite repressive attitudes toward female assertiveness, women writers flourished in every stratum of eighteenth-century society-- aristocratic, working, and middle class-- through an extensive network of female, and occasionally male, patronage. During the years 1660 to 1800 "[w]riting became for the first time a respectable occupation rather than a sign of loose morals... many gifted women, while adapting to the constraints of eighteenth-century life, led unusual, often independent, and occasionally flamboyant lives as struggling novelists, actresses and playwrights, male impersonators, royal mistresses, or persecuted Quaker preachers..." xxiv, 344 pages; 25 cm. Paperback; as new. Stock#ofc0897.