The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters is a study of Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Elizabeth Carter, Hester Chapone, Mrs, Montagu, Anna Seward, Joanna Baillie, and other women who took on the role of public writers in the age of rapidly evolving print culture. Precocious, witty, learned, and confident, the eighteenth-century woman of letters was a cultural figure who was invited to think and speak with authority. Through an examination of the literary texts produced by the "Bluestockings" and an analysis of the cultural and social changes surrounding the production of theses materials, Norma Clarke looks closely at how the eighteenth-century woman of letters became such an important part of public life, and accounts for why she disappeared.