SOURCE: Springborg, Patricia. “Mary Astell and John Locke.” In The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650-1740, edited by Steven N. Zwicker, pp. 276-303. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Springborg examines Astell's critique of the writings of John Locke, analyzing the differences and similarities between the two writers, as well as providing an overview of Astell's contributions to the political and literary debates of the Augustan era.

A poor Northern English gentlewoman, Mary Astell was born in 1666 of a mother from an old Newcastle Catholic gentry family, and of a father who had barely completed his apprenticeship with the company of Hostman of Newcastle upon Tyne, before he died leaving the family debt-ridden when Mary was twelve. With customary spiritedness Mary Astell moved to London when she was twenty, making her literary debut by presenting to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, a collection of her...