This chapter focuses on the essayistic contribution of women writers before the American Civil War. Antebellum women exploited the essay’s openness to write in formats that conformed approximately to conventions of men’s writings but that took shape in host genres, frequently letters, or in generic hybrids as they negotiated gender prescriptions. Conduct manuals, schooling, and published lecture-essays advised on composing essays yet encouraged cultivation in cognate genres of conversation and the familiar letter, social “accomplishments” ceded as the sole literary “arts” in which women might excel. Conversational culture also spawned associations in which women circulated manuscripts and could offer access to periodical publishers in need of materials for audiences growing as literacy spread. Publishing compositions became almost a rite of passage for middle-class white women. Poverty and racist practices posed obstacles to education, publication, and fame for other women who nonetheless composed essays and published outside mainstream venues. They figure among those who produced an extensive body of essays whose range, merit, and impact remain inadequately acknowledged.

Ban Zhao (c. 45–117) was the first woman public intellectual in ancient China. Her Lessons for Women (Nüjie), composed around 100 CE, was the earliest Chinese written work known to be authored by a woman scholar solely intended for women’s education. This text was widely studied since its publication until the early twentieth century. Besides being an accoladed scholar, Ban Zhao was also a mother of several children. Her life and writings exhibited an interesting contradiction between her independent spirit as a contrarian and a conformist compromise to constrictive social norms on women. Consequently, she was both praised as an exemplary woman philosopher and condemned as an accomplice of the patriarchal oppression of women. This chapter argues against the overly-simplistic anti-feminist charge of Ban Zhao by examining her life and a wider range of her writings than is usually considered, including not only her Lessons for Women but also her poetry and official memoranda, in order to reappraise her philosophy and her distinctive strategy to gender politics.