ABSTRACT
In 1617 Jacques Olivier wrote a popular misogynist tract which was republished seventeen times in the subsequent hundred years, and translated into English in 1662 by an anonymous author (T.M.). Several rather worn editions of the original French versions are available in British libraries, suggesting an eager English readership. Part of the preface reads:
[woman] you live here on earth as the world’s most imperfect creature: the scum of nature, the cause of misfortune, the source of quarrels, the toy of the foolish, the plague of the wise, the stirr r of hell, the tinder of vice, the guardian of excrement, a monster in nature, an evil necessity, a multiple chimera, a sorry pleasure, Devil’s bait, the enemy of angels.
