ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book examines how writing was used as a form of philanthropy by upper- and middling-class women during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Today, philanthropy connotes benevolence and altruism, usually taking the form of voluntarily giving money or time. However, in the eighteenth century, philanthropy often referred to a feeling of love for mankind and the desire to help improve mankind for the benefit of society as a whole. As the quote from Dryden indicates, this feeling of philanthropy, the love of mankind, is a relatively new term by the early eighteenth century. The key to accomplishing the cultivation of moral sensibility is reading. While morality is 'aestheticized', levels of literacy and, concurrently, levels of aesthetic sensitivity are entrees to proper 'moral virtue.
