Judith Sargent Murray
Judith Sargent Murray was perhaps the most accomplished female essayist of the Revolutionary era. Publishing under various pen names, she advocated for economic independence and better educational opportunities for women. Two years before Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she published “On the Equality of the Sexes” in the Massachusetts Magazine. Her letter books, which run to twenty volumes, were discovered only in 1984; the Judith Sargent Murray Society (jsmsociety.com) is now transcribing and indexing them for publication. This striking portrait by John Singleton Copley hints at her intelligence and sardonic wit. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago/Art Resource, NY.