ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of British women in the public sphere, from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Women rarely feature in histories of British political life, and this is particularly the case when considering periods before the mid-nineteenth century. Political history in general often has a masculine bias, focusing on male actors without seeking to question why men dominated Separate sphere. Women born into the British upper classes could expect politics to be a significant part of their lives. Politics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was dominated by aristocratic families, for whom politics was the family vocation. Wives and daughters would be expected to take an interest in the political careers of their menfolk, and often to provide support in practical ways. If well-connected women could engage with ‘official’ politics, there were opportunities for women from other classes to be politically active in other ways.
