First published in 1929, Before the Bluestockings is a study of the individual lives and the position of educated Englishwomen from the Restoration to the end of the first third of the eighteenth century. The question is approached not only from the women’s point of view—Hannah Woolley, Mary Astell and Elizabeth Elstob—but also records the views of contemporary observers like Lord Halifax, John Locke, George Ballard and Sir Richard Steele.