The Female Reader

Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blyth ( source ) Almost 150 years before women in America were given the right to vote, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, urging him to "remember the ladies" when fighting for America's independence from Great Britain. This private letter signified a first step in the fight for equal rights between men and women. Adams was recognised as a formidable woman in her own right, even before she became a Presidential First Lady. The love and mutual respect between Abigail and her husband lead many to consider the pair "America's first power couple". Reading time: 6 minutes Braintree March 31 1776 I wish you would ever write me a Letter half as long as I write you; and tell me if you may where your Fleet are gone? What sort of Defence Virginia can make against our common Enemy? Whether it is so situated as to make an able Defence? Are not the Gentery Lords and the common people vassals, are they not like the unciviliz...

Archery Practice (From scanned copy of Chinese Stories ) While stationed as a missionary in the Kwangtung Province in Southern China, Adele M. Field heard many tales spoken in the Swatow vernacular by those who could not read or write. These tales furnished mental entertainment for her during many nights when travelling in a slow native boat, or sitting in a dim native hut. Field considered these "almond-eyed women and children" to be her "beloved companions in serious work and in needed recreation", and set about transcribing their stories to print. In a similar fashion to the Arabian Nights  anthology, the forty stories contained in her book, Chinese Fairy Tales, the Romance of The Strayed Arrow  we will read today runs through the whole volume to a climactic finale. Reading time: 9 minutes THE STRAYED ARROW IN the village of Grand Spur, there lived a poor couple, who had no children save one daughter, named Pearl. This little maid troubled her doting...

Tunis Market, Cairo (via A Celebration of Women Writers ) Through the winter of 1873-1874, Amelia Edwards and her companion, Lucy Renshawe, were prompted to take refuge in Egypt to escape the monotony of rainy weather! Beginning in Cairo, they travelled up the Nile to Abu Simbel, while Edwards catalogued their journey for her travelogue,  A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877). In this extract from the first chapter of  A Thousand Miles up the Nile,  we see through Edwards' eyes the hustle and bustle of the place: her descriptions of European tourists of the time and the colourful, labyrinthine bazaars. Reading time: 15 minutes A Thousand Miles up the Nile From Chapter 1: Cairo and The Great Pyramid IT is the traveller's lot to dine at many table-d'hôtes in the course of many wanderings ; but it seldom befalls him to make one of a more miscellaneous gathering than that which overfills the great dining-room at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo during the beginning an...

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie ( Wikipedia) Mary Wollstonecraft may be considered one of the pioneers of education for females, in a time when women and girls were little considered for scholarly improvement. Prior to her infamous publication, A Vindication of the Rights of Women , Wollstencraft authored The Female Reader , which was published under the name of her confidante, Mr. Cresswick, in order to be taken seriously as an instructive manual suitable for the endeavour. Today's reading is Wollestoncraft's preface to The Female Reader, which sets out her premise of why and how females in the eighteenth century should be educated. Reading time: 13 minutes. THE FEMALE READER OR MISCELLANEOUS PIECES IN PROSE AND VERSE; SELECTED FROM THE BEST WRITERS, AND DISPOSED UNDER PROPER HEADS, FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG WOMEN; BY MR. CRESSWICK, TEACHER OF ELOCUTION. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, A PREFACE, CONTAINING SOME HINTS ON FEMALE EDUCATION IT is univers...