Karen O'Brien is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is co-founder of cCHANGE, an organization that links research with action for with transformations to sustainability. Karen was named by Web of Science as one of the world's most influential researchers of the past decade in 2019 and 2020. In 2021 she was co-recipient of the BBVA Foundations Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Climate Change.

An original study of how Enlightenment ideas shaped the lives of women and the work of eighteenth-century women writers.

Introduction: the progress of society; 1. Anglican Whig feminism in England, 1690-1760: self-love, reason and social benevolence; 2. From savage to Scotswoman: the history of femininity; 3. Roman, Gothic and medieval women: the historicisation of womanhood, 1750-c.1804; 4. Catharine Macaulay's Histories of England: liberty, civilisation and the female historian; 5. Good manners and partial civilisation in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft; 6. The history women and the population men, 1760-1830; Bibliography.