Fordyce was considered an excellent orator, and his collection of sermons found a ready audience among English clergy and laity alike.
In her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that she must address Fordyce's Sermons, though they do not deserve such notice, because they had been given as reading material to so many young people.
She called Fordyce's prescribed female behavior in response to a neglectful and indifferent husband "the portrait of a house slave.
"[3] In the novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen, Mr Collins, a clergyman, attempts to read the book aloud to the women during a visit to the Bennet household.
three pages" leading him to stop reading, with the comment, "how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit.