An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex

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Drake (active 1670s-1723) was an English intellectual and author who was part of a circle of writers and philosophers including Mary Astell, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and John Norris, and who is remembered for this contribution to the field of feminist literature published anonymously in 1696. The essay was first attributed to Astell but Drake's authorship has since been confirmed and the work includes a poem by her husband, James Drake, a physician and Tory pamphleteer. Written in the form of a letter to a female friend, the essay uses rational arguments to show that the widely held belief in women's intellectual inferiority is outdated, interspersing her arguments with sketches of various male stereotypes including the Bully, the Beau and the Pedant to illustrate that men also had follies. No other of her works are known to have survived but it is possible that she may have published under a pseudonym.