author
active 1696-1707 Judith Drake
Best known for a lively early feminist essay, this little-known English writer argued for women’s intelligence and education with wit and sharp social observation. Her surviving work places her among the bold voices challenging gender assumptions at the end of the seventeenth century.
1 Audiobook
An essay in defence of the female sex In which are inserted the characters of a pedant, a squire, a beau, a vertuoso, a poetaster, a city-critick, &c. in a letter to a lady.
by active 1696-1707 Judith Drake, Mary Astell
About the author
Judith Drake was an English author and intellectual active around the late 1690s and early 1700s. She is most often associated with An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696), a spirited response to ideas that treated women as naturally inferior. The book mixes argument, satire, and character sketches, which helps it feel lively even now.
Very little about her life is certain. Sources commonly describe her as part of a circle of English women writers and thinkers that included Mary Astell and others interested in education, religion, and women’s place in society. She is also generally identified as the wife of physician and writer James Drake, though many basic biographical details remain unclear.
That uncertainty has not stopped her work from lasting. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex is still read as an important early feminist text, not only because it defends women, but because it does so with confidence, humor, and a clear sense that bad arguments deserve to be challenged.