In accomplished essayist, playwright, and poet, Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820) was America's first notable feminist. This brief study of her life and work takes a novel topical approach to provide a window on the gender issues that were being debated in the United States and Europe during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this first half of the book, thematic chapters examine Murray's experience of -- and her pronouncements on -- marriage, motherhood, women's education, writing, and the construction of gender in American society. The biography is followed by previously unavailable letters poems, and essays, along with examples of Murray's published work.