I'm very interested in the topic, but the premise of the book and the voice of the author didn't work for me. It's hard to argue that it's a movement when each of the women she's focusing on seem to live very disconnectedly from the rest. There was also a very modern feminist voice of the author that frequently creeped into the book. There was also a distance between me and the women I was reading about. I didn't really feel like I knew them after reading about them.

Susannah Gibson has researchef her topic very thoroughly and makes the era of salons run by intelligent women come alive. Her narrative is engaging and draws the readers in. I enjoyed reading this title.

Well-researched and thorough! The narratives of these historical figures are well-told with a nice amount of primary and secondary sources, giving the work the right academic tone and structure with a lovely story-telling element.

The amazing stories of the women who defied convention and the 18th century patriarchy to give themselves the education they wanted and show the world a woman wasn’t lesser than a man.