By a Society of Ladies: Essays in the Female Tatler

"This edition can therefore be regarded as the most important republication of a Mandeville text in the last few decades, and should be required reading for anyone seriously concerned to understand the growth of his challenging ideas. "
—Professor Irwin Primer in
History of Political Thought Volume XXI Issue 4

"Mandeville's contributions to
The Female Tatler are almost unknown but they are of fundamental importance for understanding
The Fable of the Bees and a social theory that was to be of central importance to the Enlightenment's conception of modernity. The letters belong to the polemical world of early eighteenth-century journalism and have the energy, intelligence and gaiety characteristic of Grub Street at its best. They deal with many of the subjects which Mandeville was to make his own. Unexpectedly and excitedly, they also show how closely his thinking about society was bound up with his interest in the position in contemporary society. Vintage Mandeville, in fact."
—Professor Nicholas Phillipson

This book collects for the first time since their original publication the 32 papers which Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), author of
The Fable of the Bees (1st ed., 1714), contributed to
The Female Tatler (1709-10), one of the many imitators of Richard Steele's
Tatler.

In these papers, Mandeville's protagonists, the sisters Lucinda and Artesia, discuss and debate the origin and basis of human society and its progress, honour and courage, the value of a life devoted to making money, and most importantly, the position and the virtues of women. The essays are fully annotated, providing significant information about Mandeville's sources and identifying historical and literary references. The volume also includes a substantive introduction by Maurice Goldsmith, a leading expert on Mandeville, explaining the relation of the papers to the social thought of the period and the development of Mandeville's views.
The Female Tatler essays systematically address themes further developed in
The Fable of the Bees, a work very widely read in the eighteenth century and which was a stimulus to the theories of (among others) David Hume and Adam Smith. The collection will be of interest to scholars of eighteenth-century English literature, history, political and economic thought, women's studies and philosophy.

—first publication of these essays since the eighteenth century and the only available edition
—extended debate on female virtue is an important element in the development of feminism
—Mandeville's defence of luxury and consumption is significant in the history of the discussion of commercial society and capitalism