Description: Mary Hilton addresses a neglected area in historical research by examining the educational writings of leading women moralists and activists, including Sarah Fielding, Hester Chapone, Sarah Trimmer, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Marcet, and Mary Carpenter. In connecting the young citizen, the family, and the local parish to wider social, religious, and political issues, these women moralists were highly influential in the public realm, spurring their many readers to action and reform.
Review Quotes: 'Mary Hilton's comprehensive cultural history convincingly makes the case that women intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries enlarged and shaped the terms and outcomes of public debates about educating Britain's children. Her highly readable yet learned volume should be of great interest to scholars of social, political and educational history.' Lynne Vallone, Rutgers University, USA 'There is little doubt that Women and the Shaping of the Nation's Young is a thoroughly researched, valuable and welcome addition to our knowledge and understanding of both the history of education and thought, and to the hidden power which women wielded in society between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.' Children's Books History Society Newsletter