This volume serves as an introduction to a rich and as yet under-explored period in the history of women¿s ideas. The volume provides a partial insight into the richness and complexity of women¿s political ideas in the centuries prior to the French Revolution. The essays in this collection examine women¿s political writings with particular reference to the themes of virtue (especially the virtue of phronesis or prudence), liberty, and toleration.

List of Illustrations.- Acknowledgements and Note on the Text.- Notes on Contributors.- Introduction; Jacqueline Broad, Karen Green.- 1. Political Thought as Improvisation: Female Regency and Mariology in Late Medieval French Thought; Earl Jeffrey Richards.- 2. Phronesis Feminised: Prudence from Christine de Pizan to Elizabeth I; Karen Green.- 3. Catherine d¿Amboise¿s Livre des Prudents et Imprudents: Negotiating Space for Female Voices in Political Discourse; Catherine M. Müller.- 4. ¿Machiavelli in Skirts¿ Isabella d¿Este and Politics; Carolyn James.- 5. Liberty and the Right of Resistance: Women¿s Political Writings of the English Civil War Era; Jacqueline Broad.- 6. Margaret Cavendish and the False Universal; Hilda L. Smith.- 7. The Social and Political Thought of Damaris Cudworth Masham; Regan Penaluna.- 8. ¿Our Religion and Liberties¿: Mary Astell¿s Christian Political Polemics; Michal Michelson.- 9. Virtue, God, and Stoicism in the Thought of Elizabeth Carter and Catharine Macaulay; Sarah Hutton.- 10. Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft on the Will; Martina Reuter.- 11. Keeping Ahead of the English? A Defence of Jews by Cornélie Wouters, Baroness of Vasse (1790); Carrie F. Klaus.- Bibliography.- Index.