When it was first published in 1984, this book filled an acknowledged gap in the social history of the period and made available hitherto inaccessible sources. The work draws on newspapers and journals, memoirs, diaries, courtesy books, county surveys and records, but also on the literature of the period, its novels, poetry and plays. It examines the role assigned to women in eighteenth-century society and the education thought fitting to perform it. It looks at attitudes to courtship and marriage, chastity and sexual passion. It explores the role of women as wives and mothers, as spinsters