A page-turner is what this turned out to be for me. I first read about Lady Mary while reading another book whose author described her as 'an intrepid 18th-century traveler'. That intrigued me. I meant to get Lady Mary's 'Travels' and found this delightful book instead. Her letters were so enjoyable it was hard for me to put this book aside. There's so much humor, wisdom and intelligence in her writing. She had a true spirit of adventure. I came away from this book admiring Lady Mary very much. It's a real shame her work is not more well known.

I stumbled upon this book while researching an essay on early modern women writers and quickly came to admire this wonderful woman. She has an intelligent and amusing way of describing and relating people and incidents. She has all the intelligence, brilliance and wit of Jane Austen. I highly recommend this for all those who love the lives of intelligent, spirited and talented women.

Dry, academic, and basically pointless. If the purpose of this book is to honor the fact that women wrote at all, mission accomplished. If the author was trying to clarify what it was women were trying to say or why they were trying to say it, one must read between the lines to find any interpretation at all. Perhaps that is the dauntless task set before the editor, devoid of bias, who attempts to document the writing of an oppressed class in an oppressed time. For a women writer to articulate anything publicly was considered unladylike, shameless, even promiscuous. Women driven to write in spite of such judgements were required to be surreptitious with their statements, subtle, endearing, even self-effacing. As painfully humiliating as it is to be made aware of the manipulation necessitated by the power of male writers, it is an important nuance to be aware of in honoring such women. After all, there are many women who would not have been published at all had they not masqueraded as men. What a loss that would have been! If you can get through the verbiage, and if you are looking specifically for this kind of documentation, an attempt to find this out of print book may be worth it to you. For me, it was painfully disheartening to realize how silenced women can be.