“The History of Harriot and Sophia” is a serialized novel within the periodical that offered middle-class women didactic lessons on how to be successful in the competitive marriage market with a curriculum of informal intellectual education, paired with an example of a woman who attracts a suitable suitor, and achieves happiness in her married life with an intellectually matched husband. It’s focus is on the differences between Harriot’s “polite” or boarding school education in comparison to Sophia’s “intellectual” informal education. In 1762, the serialized novel was revised and re-titled Sophia (modern edition available through Broadview Press).
THE HISTORY OF HARRIOT AND SOPHIA
HARRIOT and Sophia were the daughters of a gentleman, who, having spent a good paternal inheritance before he was five and thirty, was reduced to […]