Elizabeth Hamilton lived a quiet life as a single woman of letters at the turn of the eighteenth century, one of an increasing number of women who had the courage to breach the walls of propriety prescribed for them by writing for a literary marketplace. Though she was neither so great a novelist as Jane Austen nor so trenchant a polemicist or radical a thinker as Mary Wollstonecraft, she successfully explored a variety of genres, and her work was widely read and appreciated by British readers of her time. In fact, she earned the praise of both Austen and Sir Walter Scott. Through volumes of essays, letters, and novels, she advocated evangelical religion, early childhood education, and the mother's role in the process of nurturance. Her work formed part of the growing body of opinion on education for women. According to Vineta Colby, though Hamilton wrote few novels...