SOURCE: An Introduction to the Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray, edited by Sharon M. Harris, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. xv-xliii.

In the following essay, Harris provides an overview and analysis of Murray's life, works, and contributions to literary and cultural history.

"I feel the pride of womanhood all up in arms," Judith Sargent Murray declared in a 1777 letter to a female cousin (letter 54).¹ Responding to what she termed the "abominable" and "intolerable" arguments against women's education by the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, she asserted, "For those sentiments, so humiliating to our sex, avowed by Rousseau, I will never forgive him" (letter 54). The pride of womanhood—and the many capabilities of women—were themes to which Murray dedicated her writings and her life. Her sixty-nine-year life spanned crucial decades of revolution and national independence that redefined concepts of citizenship, literary genius, and women's rights. Perhaps no American...