Collective 18th-century biographies of literary women

This table compares six eighteenth-century collections of notable women: George Ballard's Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain (1752),[2] John Duncombe's The Feminead (1754),[3] the Biographium Faemineum (Anon., 1766),[4] Mary Scott's The Female Advocate (1775),[5] Richard Polwhele's The Unsex'd Females[6] (1798), and Mary Hay's Female Biography (1803).

[7] As the focus of this chart is British literary figures, broadly defined, two of the texts have been treated selectively because of their wider range.

[4][7] Three of these texts are collective biographies,[2][4][7] while three of them are more pointed political interventions in contemporary debates about women's roles.

[3][5][6] Three are poems[3][5][6] and three are dictionaries,[2][4][7] but they all list, and comment on, literary women and their accomplishments.

NB: In the columns, readers can find subjects' names or pseudonyms as presented in the text.