Published between 1760 and 1761 and believed largely to be written by Charlotte Lennox (it was marketed as “by the Author of The Female Quixote“), The Lady’s Museum sought to educate and inform its readership through a variety of media including letters to and from the editor, poetry, translation, history, philosophy, geography, travel writing, and more.
For further historical and scholarly context into the Lady’s Museum—and insight on the value of teaching it—see Susan Carlile and Karenza Sutton-Bennett’s 2022 Aphra Behn Online (ABO) article: “Teaching the Lady’s Museum and Sophia: Imperialism, Early Feminism, and Beyond.”
Critical Introductions
The below introductions are intended to frame The Lady’s Museum for a non-specialist and undergraduate-student audience.
At ladysmuseum.com, we are dedicated to the professionalization of Lady’s Museum students, teachers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Teachers, if you would like your students to draft a critical introduction for credit in your class (and/or potential inclusion and publication on ladysmuseum.com) please contact the editors and pitch your and/or your students’ article ideas to us. Visit Teach with this Edition for more information.
- Biographical Timeline by Karenza Sutton-Bennett
- Lennox and “Female Education” by Bailey Meyerhoff
- Women’s Educational Politics in the Eighteenth-Century Periodical by Bailey Meyerhoff
- Charlotte Lennox: Eco-feminist? by Bailey Meyerhoff
- Leveling Men’s and Women’s Educations in “Philosophy for the Ladies” by Grace Ayoub and Kelly Plante
Forthcoming
- Images in The Lady’s Museum: An Annotated Collection by Kelly Plante
- Biography of Charlotte Lennox
- Lennox and Samuel Johnson
- Lennox and Jane Austen
- Lennox and Translation
- A History of the Eighteenth-Century Periodical
- Timeline of Woman-Edited Eighteenth-Century Periodicals
- Eighteenth-Century Women Periodicalists
- Lennox and the (Proto) Feminist Tradition
- The Lady’s Museum and British Imperialism
- The “History of the Princess Padmani” in the Fourteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-first Centuries
- Critical Reception of The Lady’s Museum
- Genres in The Lady’s Museum
- Literary Themes in The Lady’s Museum
- The Lady’s Museum and The Female Spectator
- Writing and Editing Early Magazines
- The Eighteenth-Century Novel and Periodical: A Common Ancestry