ABSTRACT
Women anticipated a critical audience for their published works. However, female authors developed strategies to allow their inclusion in intellectual and literary discourse. They acknowledged male expectations of their behaviour and abilities in a variety of ways. Women used dedications or introductory passages to frame their work within the context of a supportive audience. They suggested that their writings were only for a personal friend or that they wrote to avoid idleness, and claimed that their work had been published without their permission. In these ways, women both reinforced contemporary expectations of appropriate female behaviour and also used these expectations to justify their writing.
